Yahoo boosts free e-mail storage to 100MB

Web portal Yahoo will begin offering "virtually unlimited storage" for its paid e-mail customers and will upgrade free users to 100MB, an executive said Thursday.

The upgrade is part of an overall enhancement for Yahoo Mail that will launch this summer. Besides additional storage, the service will get a face-lift and tie in more Yahoo-branded services, such as Photos and Messenger.

The announcement comes a month after search rival Google said it would launch a free e-mail service called Gmail that offers 1GB of storage, considerably more space than free versions of Yahoo Mail and Microsoft's Hotmail. Yahoo currently offers 4MB of storage to free users of its e-mail service.

The company's decision to boost its e-mail storage is not surprising. A day before Gmail details were unveiled, Yahoo sent e-mails to some customers in hopes of gauging their interest in receiving 100MB of storage.

The company said the e-mail was just a typical consumer survey for its "loyal consumer base" and denied that it had any relation to the news of Gmail.

Gmail has sparked considerable controversy, because Google plans to scan people's e-mails to serve ads based on message text. The plans have drawn fire from privacy advocates and industry leaders alike.

Details of Yahoo's storage upgrade were revealed by Jim Brock, the company's senior vice president of communication and consumer services, during Yahoo's presentation to Wall Street analysts.

"The objective here is to make storage quotas irrelevant to users," Brock said.

The competition between Yahoo and Google continues to heighten. In February, Yahoo dropped Google as its algorithmic search provider and instead launched its own technology. The companies also compete over distribution deals, as evidenced in Yahoo replacing Google search on CNN.com this week.

Copycats.

The copycats. ;-P At least with this move they've probably saved themself from becoming a ghost-town when G-Mail comes out.

Hey, you at Microsoft! Ya, you! Stop being cheapskates, why don't you?! Upgrade our free Hotmail accounts too until G-Mail comes out and I can switch to them! Lol.

[rodnarms]

A dot.com e-mail storage bust?

Of all the areas that Internet companies wish to
aggressively compete, online free webmail was not on the top of
my list.

I mean it's great, all this large storage space for free. I hope this
isn't another dot.com bubble. Once the 5% space hog tier (not a
scientific figure) cause acres of server farms, will Yahoo and
Google back out?

One thing is for sure, Hotmail's free 2 megabyte space is not
competitive in this new environment. Heck, even full subscribers
of MSN Premium are limited in space. I hope this shakes them
up.

Hotmail Lagging

I have been using hotmail since its inception long before microsoft bought it out. It has come a long ways but as of lately I see changes I don't like. The blocking of email that I don't want blocked. Size limitations (and I am a paid subscriber). For the first time since I became a hotmail member I am looking at alternatives. I do hope they catch on and can compete with yahoo and gmail

Yahoo 100mb Offer Comes With Some Problems!

i've just been at a forum discussing problems associated with the new Yahoo!Mail format. many there (including myself) have complained that they cannot access any of their Yahoo!Mail accounts - or rather, after signing in, cannot get into their Inbox. Yahoo! has stayed pretty silent on the matter so far & right now it appears that this problem has lack of coverage on the Net. this is the forum. no one knows if this is a widespread problem within Yahoo!Mail; it could be to do with the new formatting, or the sheer numbers of people interested in accessing the free 100mb. the changeover comes at a bad time for me, because i'm expecting some important news via email (& email only!), & now i can't access any of my accounts. Perhaps someone would like to approach Yahoo! about this? here's the forum: http://www.mooreds.com/weblog/archives/000024.html
Michael.

Can't get into my main Yahoo Mail

I'm likewise not able to get into my main Yahoo Mail account, so the 100 Mb sounds nice, but this is already teaching me not to put too much faith in a free service, particularly one with such a poor record of resolving problems. I wouldn't want 100 Mb of messages I need access to completely inaccessible to me.

Apparently, there is something about my main Yahoo account that doesn't like the upgrade. I can access Yahoo Mail with a backup account. I then log off that account, log into my main account and all I get is a blank screen. I can go to Yahoo Groups and edit my main account, but I cannot get into email. The fact that I can get into and out of a Yahoo Mail account without a problem, but have trouble with a different account, indicates that the trouble is out of my control.

Yahoo 100MB...useless!!!

The offer of free 100MB for my yahoo email account is useless. I prefer the old service. At least I could access my email from home. Not so with the new service. And apparently several hundreds or thousands of others are experiencing the same problem. What's the use of upgrading a service if you cannot keep up with the demand. What bugs me most is that I have purchased a domain name from yahoo...and this is the service I get. No email!

[alpap]

Yahoo e-mail blocked

I can get into yahoo mail easily from my work computer, but not at all from home , where my access is through Comcast cable network. Could it be that Comcast is blocking Yahoo mail ?

[alouh]

Re: as stated

thank you very much for the kind support to my e-mail block. Now I can used my e-mail well thaks for CNET.

[AL-SALAMI]

Thanks