Yahoo Mail will be 10 year old this May. To celebrate this anniversary, Yahoo has announced unlimited storage for all Yahoo Mail users starting from May 2007. With this announcement, Yahoo Mail will overtake Gmail (2.8GB) and Live Mail (2GB) both in terms of storage space and users. Yahoo Mail currently has over 250 million registered users worldwide, far more than any other competing service.
Yahoo Mail was born out of the acquisition of RocketMail by Yahoo in 1997. It initially offered 4MB of storage, good enough to hold few word docs or photographs. By 2005, the storage was escalated to 100MB and currently it offers 1GB of storage space.
Unlimited storage space is available for all Yahoo Mail users, not just Yahoo Mail Beta users. TechCrunch writes that users will have to stick with Yahoo’s abusive policies and follow “normal email practicesâ€, not to use Yahoo Mail for storage purpose. Users who violate these terms will be notified or suspended by Yahoo. However, the user can still have access to his data.
This would prove to be a real incentive for users to make a switch back to Yahoo Mail, but Yahoo still lacks POP and forwarding feature, which remains as a paid feature. I’ll continue to stick with Gmail, mainly because of the POP which allows me to sync mails to my email client (Thunderbird). Maybe, I’ll use Yahoo Mail to store automatic database backups which are quite bulky.
Have you ever wondered how these providers offer such incredible storage space? Nearly 99.9% of the users don’t need such storage space at all. If all users start utilizing their maximum storage space, I bet the providers would run out of luck!
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wrote, on March 28th, 2007
[...] data del fatidico compleanno, come affermano sia TechCrunch che Tech-Buzz, ricorrerà a maggio di quest’anno e quale miglior occasione per offrire ai 250 milioni di [...]
wrote, on March 28th, 2007
Great news but I still prefer Gmail over Yahoo Mail.
wrote, on March 28th, 2007
Nothing is infinite! Yahoo knows that, but as your last paragraph points out, who is going to use that much space? I’ve had Gmail since it’s very early days of very restricted invites and I’ve only filled 10% of it, and I consider myself someone who gets a lot of email (mostly rubbish, admittedly).
To say infinite storage is available is no more use to your average user than Gmail or even Yahoo’s current storage limit, it’s just an exciting word to use that will gather attention. That seems to have worked, judging by the number of articles I’ve seen on this today, but it’s not changed my opinion that Gmail is all I need. Let’s see what happens as this pans out, my guess is not much difference.
wrote, on March 28th, 2007
Our rediff is always a step ahead in providing email storage. It was the first one to provide 1GB and then unlimited space. But this is useless anyway as I cannot upload more than 10MB at a time. I wonder how long will it take my inbox to reach infinity!!
wrote, on March 28th, 2007
Like Cucirca said I also prefer Gmail over Yahoo Mail
and Phil has got a point there too ‘nothing is unlimited on the web’ its just a hoax and marketing strategy
wrote, on March 28th, 2007
hmm storage is becoming cheap… also no one’s gonna use that much space…
wrote, on March 29th, 2007
I use Gmail more but I’d like to see if Yahoo increases the size of attachments too.
wrote, on March 29th, 2007
There was a time when people were running for storage, not anymore.I am more than happy with my Gmail account.
Yahoo must give GREAT service if they wish to generate the BuZzZZ!!
wrote, on March 29th, 2007
They should provied some new and innovative services instead of unlimited storage as i dont think we need that much space .
wrote, on March 29th, 2007
Still i very much prefer Gmail!
wrote, on March 30th, 2007
[...] for Yahoo Mail yesterday. This was missed by most sites in amongst the reporting of Yahoo adding unlimited email storage from May. I think this is a very smart move by Yahoo in an attempt to make an already very popular service [...]
wrote, on March 30th, 2007
Yahoomail Sucks!! i like only Yahoo Messenger
wrote, on April 3rd, 2007
[...] Freigabe der Mail Api wurde von vielen Seiten nicht erwähnt die nur über die Speichererhöhung berichteten. In meinen Augen ist die Freigabe der Yahoo Mail Api ein kluger Schachzug der den bereits [...]
wrote, on April 7th, 2007
@Sharique, Rediff sucks big time. What is the point of the 1GB if the mail service doesn’t work too well.
@Thilak, you’re going to use Yahoo! Mail to store your database backups? isn’t that against the terms ?
wrote, on October 12th, 2007
[...] all the bells and whistles about Gmail’s storage stopped when Yahoo announced unlimited space for email storage but that was too late for Yahoo as the young and rich crowd shifted to [...]