Yahoo Mail to offer unlimited storage

Yahoo will begin offering unlimited storage for its free Web-based e-mail in May, the company announced late Tuesday. The move makes Yahoo the first of the major free e-mail providers to offer unlimited storage, but it likely will not be the last.

Yahoo currently offers 1 gigabyte for its free mail service and 2GB for its premium fee-based service. Google's free Gmail service offers more than 2.5GB of storage, and Windows Live Hotmail offers 2GB for free.

"We are watching the trend lines of how people are using e-mail...and they are sending more photos and videos and rich media," said John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo Mail.

Google began the storage wars in earnest when it launched Gmail in April 2004 with 1GB of storage. Yahoo Mail, which launched in 1997 with 4MB of storage, upgraded to 100MB of storage shortly after Google's Gmail announcement, bumped it up to 250MB in late 2004, and then up to 1GB in 2005.

With 250 million users, Yahoo Mail is the largest global e-mail provider and the largest in the U.S., according to comScore.

The unlimited storage will begin rolling out globally in May, and Yahoo expects to have all of its customers covered within a month, except for China and Japan. "We will continue working with these markets on their storage plans," Kremer said.

[miqaelee]

unlimited yahoo mail storage

I consider Yahoo mail the best of the rest, the extra storage sounds great, especially with all the jpegs and mpegs we send.....now what about the final version of the new yahoo mail including the promising Photo Mail which has been stalled in a beta version far too long? *~*

[mrflimflam]

It's all marketing

The same reason Google constantly increases the size. It's all well and good they offer us 2GB+ storage space, but how many people will use it? How many will use half of it? How many will use a quarter? I've had gmail for well over a year and have barely scratched the surface of my available space--and I've made strides to fill it up. I have all sorts of backed up data in there.

In the long run, it's nice that "unlimited space" is available, but no one could or would be able to make much use of the available space.

It's all in the marketing.

[timkennett]

Nice, but...

I decided to go with Gmail. I wanted to like Yahoo Mail, but it
lacked some features that I really came to enjoy in Gmail. I like
Gmail's conversation/threading and the ability to reply to mail from
the same address that a message was sent to. But, I'm happy to see
Yahoo lead the way with unlimited storage. Perhaps it'll cause
others to do the same.

[HlLLARY CLITON]

needs more improvements

I'd like to see better SPAM filters and less lag, at times during the day Yahoo email is slooooooow.

[enscorp]

FREE STORAGE VIA EMAIL

Wonderful. Now I have a free backup system for the 60 GB of images I have on my HD. All i have to do is send them to myself at Yahoo, and I have Unlimited Permanent Backed-Up storage at Yahoo in case my System goes belly up.

I think Yahoo et.al. (groogle, Microsoft and others whol follow) will find that they are shooting themselves in the foot by offering this.

Oh well, sometimes BAD descisions are made. I know I will take FULL ADVANTAGE of this offer.

Thanks Yahoooooooooooooooo ;-)

[sanenazok]

Just get ready

Just get ready to send yourself thousands of e-mails with attachments, since you figure that Yahoo will retain a fairly tight limit on size and number of e-mail attachments. Get ready to send 60GB in 8MB increments.

With minimal effort you can automate this, but still it's going to be way too much work for the average user to undertake.

[sudeshp]

Not the first One

Rediff.com, India's largest email service provider, already started offering unlimited storage about a month back. Rediff has a terrific following in India and remains India's only surviving portal.

[bingobob]

What happens to Mail Plus?

Given that one of the perks of subscribing to Mail Plus was the extra storage, I wonder how Yahoo intends to offset that loss to its paying users.

http://ars.barelyaverage.com

[geonautika]

No pop3 access for the free account

I use both Yahoo and Gmail, but Gmail is more convenient because it gives us POP3 access.

[mrc77]

I hope Google does the same soon.

I have two Gmail accounts that are almost full because I send a lot of mp3s and video to friends and relatives. It's a great way to store files, too. I don't like to delete anything, except spam, so unlimited storage would be really good for me. I don't like Yahoo's interface, but I love Gmail's so I hope Google will copy this move right away.

[snowjn]

AOL is unlimited and has been free since August 2006

See unlimited storage listed as a member benefit

http://about.aol.com/memberbenefits

You should check your facts before claiming anything is first of it's kind.

[sanenazok]

but then

you have to an address ending with @aol.com

Some of us have reputations.

[imacpwr]

Yahoo Mail the next Napster...?

Just upload your whole mp3 collection to your Yahoo Mail account and forward the files to anyone who wants a copy..? Sounds simple..

[btljooz]

RIIIIIGHT...........

then you WOULD be easy pickin's for the RIAA, etc. to effect their [i]sue 'em all camPAIN[/i].

http://piv.pivpiv.dk/

Go to this site: http://p2pnet.net/index.php and sift through their archives to find out what I'm talking about. ;)

[Stating]

Unlimited Spam Is More Like It

Thirty spam emails in one day. Fake pills, mortgage loans, crud and more crud. Does Terry Smell know what REALLY matters to Yahoo customers? No, because if he did he would focus on truly improving Yahoo Mail, not just adding unnecessary "me too" features".

[btljooz]

Yup...

Their "spam 'filters'" [i]just ain't what they used to be[/i]...

Hey, Yahoo! unlimited e-mail storage is meaningless without [b]unlimited[/b] [u]Adress Blocking[/u] if you don't do something about your [i]spam filters[/i]. ;)

OOOP$!!! I forgot...letting all that spam into INBOXES instead of routing to the Bulk Folder [b]where it [u]BELONGS[/u][/b] [i]should[/i] get people to pay? for service??? :|

[paulhd]

Unlimited spam

Thirty spams a day, I get at least 100. Always the same ones. They usually go to the junk mail folder, but you have to go through the junk to find the couple of good e-mails that were misdirected. I like Yahoo Mail but they have to do something about the spam.

[Bob H in NPR]

30 spams per day?

What have you done to get that many? I put my resume on line & foolishly visited the wrong web sites. I receive about 6000 FILTERED spams a month into my bulk folder, with 0 legitimate emails included. I only receive about 40 a month I must manually remove that slip through the cracks.

So unlimited storage is strictly a marketing gimmick? I will stick with my Yahoo! Mail, thank you.

[roybenyoseph]

Free AOL Mail has unlimited storage

Upfront disclaimer ? I work for AOL and lead the Mail Product Management & Business teams.

With all the talk about Yahoo and Gmail, I thought I'd jump in and note that AOL has offered unlimited email storage to its users since 2005. And AOL is free to everyone via AOL.com.

[Johnincal]

AOL Has Terrible Customer Service!

In reply to "roybenyoseph" who works for AOL Mail.

The problem with AOL Mail (or any other department) is that they have the worst customer service of anybody. Just trying to report an issue is almost impossible. Two days ago, I went to AOL Help to report an issue (non-mail related).

First of all, just finding a way to email them with an issue requires going through a maze. If you try the easy way by clicking "contact us" at the bottom of the page ( http://help.aol.com/aimhelp/supportcentral/supportcentral.do?id=m1 ) you will find that the link doesn't even work.

Live help is reserved for ISP members only.

Because they don't provide an email address (at least one that I could find) I finally sent my issue to [e-mail].

That was two days ago and I still haven't heard anything.

But, anybody who has had or had dealings with AOL "support" (I was a member for many years) knows that once I get the reply it will be "canned" answer the most likely will not address the issue, supplied by an outsourced call center, who's job is to answer as many email and phone issues as possible, without regard to actually resolving the issue.

AOL used to be the big dog of the internet, but it has continued to loose market share due, in a large part, to terrible customer service.

I have an AOL free mail account, but never use it because I know that getting any assistance with any issue is near impossible.

I am sure you are proud of your work at AOL, as you should be. But until AOL gets it act together an other areas, such as customer support, AOL will continue to have the reputation of "AOHell".

[Mehboob Alam]

Stop the crashing FIRST!!!

I'm having an incredible number of timeouts, error messages, apology messages.. ever since the beta Web 2.0 interface was rolled out, and I dont even use that.

The standard Yahoo Mail service seems to have gone to pot. Is this a way to get people to move to the new UI which is slooowww...

[btljooz]

LOOK at what I found:

http://news.com.com/Yahoo+opens+up+e-mail+APIs+to+outsiders/2100-1032_3-6171378.html?tag=ne.fd.mnbc

[tomerbd1]

Now that yahoo mail is unlimited dont be limited by the 10MB attachmentsize

Now that Yahoo is unlimited in mailbox size, dont be limited by the attachment 10MB file size, you can send any file with any file size to your email account with a simple right click and send file (including yahoo). The freeware will automatically split and merge the file. You can also send whole folders to your email account as it will zip them up. The software is called Backup To EMail and you can download it from http://emailer.zapto.org

[bgawk]

Today is May 1, Yahoo Email still limited

Any more info when Yahoo Email is unlimited?

[chazzsubscribe]

It's not end of May yet

When a company announces a vague date -- like "3rd quarter" or "May" always assume the specific date is at the very end of the range. If they wanted to say a specific date, like "May 1st" they would say that. Just as "3Q" is always END of Sepetember as close to October 1st as they can get), then a "May" launch will be almost June 1 bet. Then why not say "around June" then? Because "May" sounds earlier.

[min.darren]

May 31, 2007 - NOW UNLIMITED

My e-mail had a little yahoo guy come up and explode the storage counter. YEA!

[fortunindonesia]

No Coment is now

[waleed_ironman-]

welcome

[waleed_ironman-]

welcome iron man

[Joe Turk]

the link I copied and paste seemed pretty big to remember