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As part of an overall redesign of its mail service, Yahoo also upgraded Mail Plus paid users to 2GB of storage and lowered its subscription rate from $29.99 a year to $19.99. Other a la carte services, such as POP e-mail forwarding, are consolidated under this plan and will no longer be sold on a standalone basis.
The storage boost comes as no surprise. Yahoo arch-rival Google in April announced plans to launch a free e-mail service called "Gmail" with 1GB of storage. The upcoming launch of Gmail has changed the landscape for free-e-mail users, but also raised privacy concerns because of Google's decision to serve advertisements based on scanning the content of e-mail text. Yahoo executives last month announced the company would offer its own storage upgrade as part of overall changes to the service.
Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo's vice president of communications products, said the changes were enacted to make "e-mail storage a nonissue." He acknowledged that competition was a factor as well.
"There are new competitors on the scene, and we want to make sure the things we're focused on are important with users," Garlinghouse said.
The new storage limits amount to a strategic turnaround for Yahoo. In 2002, the company began charging for various tiers of storage size for its photo and briefcase products. Yahoo also lowered its free e-mail memory from 6MB to 4MB for new members.
Aside from allowing people to keep more e-mails, most changes to the new Yahoo Mail are cosmetic with a stress on making the service sleeker and faster. The product will also place more emphasis on a mail search bar at the top of the page. Unlike Google's, the Yahoo bar will not search e-mail text to serve advertisements, but will let people more easily hunt for buried correspondence.
Garlinghouse also said the company will put 50 million identities back into circulation. That means identities that have remained dormant for years will become available again. Although Yahoo has maintained a policy that it can recycle user identities after six months of dormancy, the company has taken a "very conservative approach" to offering these names back to the public, Garlinghouse said.
"The product will give greater emphasis to a mail search bar at
the top of the page. Unlike Google, the Yahoo search bar will not
search e-mail text to serve advertisements, but will allow people
to more easily hunt for buried correspondence."
This makes no sense whatsoever! Had you used gmail, you'd
know it allows you to search your own correspondence, and it's
not used to search advertisements as you falsely state in the
article.
related.
1: Yahoo will now more prominently feature a Search bar that
searches through email messages.
2: Yahoo will not be statistically analyzing your email (or, as
some would put it "running a search engine") in order to
determine which ads it ought to display to you while you use the
service.
Honestly, I don't think that many would particularly care if Y! did
analyze email and use that info to show ads, as long as it was
done within the rigors of a strict privacy policy. How about
offering users the option to turn off all the annoying animated
GIF and Flash ads, in exchange for targeted text ads based on
email analysis? I think a few would go for that. And then, anyone
who doesn't want it could simply keep it the way it is.
"The product will give greater emphasis to a mail search bar at
the top of the page. Unlike Google, the Yahoo search bar will not
search e-mail text to serve advertisements, but will allow people
to more easily hunt for buried correspondence."
This makes no sense whatsoever! Had you used gmail, you'd
know it allows you to search your own correspondence, and it's
not used to search advertisements as you falsely state in the
article.
related.
1: Yahoo will now more prominently feature a Search bar that
searches through email messages.
2: Yahoo will not be statistically analyzing your email (or, as
some would put it "running a search engine") in order to
determine which ads it ought to display to you while you use the
service.
Honestly, I don't think that many would particularly care if Y! did
analyze email and use that info to show ads, as long as it was
done within the rigors of a strict privacy policy. How about
offering users the option to turn off all the annoying animated
GIF and Flash ads, in exchange for targeted text ads based on
email analysis? I think a few would go for that. And then, anyone
who doesn't want it could simply keep it the way it is.
GMails search allows you to find messages based on sender, subject, and the message itself. It is not just used for the ads. I have only had 2 ads in 19 received messages.
Yahoo!Mails cheap shot at stealing Gmails look and feel has made me resent them more than I already did.
GMails search allows you to find messages based on sender, subject, and the message itself. It is not just used for the ads. I have only had 2 ads in 19 received messages.
Yahoo!Mails cheap shot at stealing Gmails look and feel has made me resent them more than I already did.
I like it.
I like it.
I don't care if there is 100MB or not, never save your e-mails on "someone else's HD". I just lost everything -- even if I am a "current" user!
I don't care if there is 100MB or not, never save your e-mails on "someone else's HD". I just lost everything -- even if I am a "current" user!
Looks like this upgrade must be the root cause.
They should warn people when they are planning server maintenance and "upgrades."
When is gmail coming on line?
Anyone know if I can downgrade my Yahoo mail account to the free one? I read somewhere if you downgrade your email account will be closed.
Looks like this upgrade must be the root cause.
They should warn people when they are planning server maintenance and "upgrades."
When is gmail coming on line?
Anyone know if I can downgrade my Yahoo mail account to the free one? I read somewhere if you downgrade your email account will be closed.
However, to my surprise, all the bugs mentioned above was fixed in less than 2 hours. I'm assuming the current instability due to their constant pushing of patches or something, so I can bear with it for next few days.
The only regret is that the announcement on Yahoo Mail change came to my inbox hours after the discovery of the change on my own.
- Agreed but they seem to be patching up quite fast
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by
June 15, 2004 10:36 AM PDT
- I agree that the whole system is unstable and initial launch was very buggy. When I checked my email this morning, the whole design was messed up---attachment showing up in Date column area, pushing over the cells on this row to right; no images indicating whether the mail was forwarded/replied; etc.
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Reply to this comment
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(52 Comments)However, to my surprise, all the bugs mentioned above was fixed in less than 2 hours. I'm assuming the current instability due to their constant pushing of patches or something, so I can bear with it for next few days.
The only regret is that the announcement on Yahoo Mail change came to my inbox hours after the discovery of the change on my own.