Hotmail, Others Follow Gmail's Storage Boost

BobPaul writes "Following behind Yahoo Mail's recent upgrade to 100MB of free storage, and trailing behind GMail's 1GB (last mentioned here), ZDNet reports that Hotmail will soon boost email storage as well. 'The upgrade will increase Hotmail's free e-mail storage limits from 2 megabytes to 250MB and its paid e-mail service, which costs $19.95 a year, from 10MB to 2 gigabytes. The changes will begin in early July.' Another interesting tidbit from the article: 'Ask Jeeves also plans to grant its e-mail subscribers more storage room... According to an e-mail sent to iWon users, Ask Jeeves plans to give each of the sites' e-mail subscribers 125MB of free storage.'"

competition

[some_god (614082)]

hurray for competition :)

Re:competition

[mikera (98932)]

Yep - just shows the power of the free market once again!

Think how little progress we'd see if large segments of the IT industry were dominated by single large corporations with no incentive to innovate..... oh wait.....

Re:competition

[by Anonymous Coward]

Google is a large company. They're worth quite a bit of money.

MS and Yahoo are offering the e-mail systems that they are now because they know Google is going to steal a lot of their business (The business model is draw in people with free accounts and try to sell more).

Actually, if you think about it, this is probably going to really hurt MS and Yahoo's business because much fewer people see the need for having more than 100mb of mail, as opposed to needing more than 6mb.

Google may just be hurting this whole e-mail industry more than it is helping.

And just to add a little twist to this comment, imagine of MS was doing what Google is doing. People would be screaming bloody murder and citing the reason I cited above. Sort of sad really....

Re:competition

[tekunokurato (531385)]

Google may just be hurting this whole e-mail industry more than it is helping.

Um, the original point was regarding the benefit to consumers. It's not hurting anyone, from that perspective. The competition is free and serves to remove excess profits from the industry, not profits altogether (the definition of a market approaching efficiency).

Re:competition

[tomhudson (43916)]

Yes, but it all boils down to a question of trust.

I trust Google. I trust Yahoo. I don't trust Microsoft/hotmail.

One of the interesting things about how Google has been able to increase the perceived value of their gmail service is that you need an invite (thanks turg [slashdot.org]).

It also creates a "web of trust". People who have been invited by other people are less likely to use a gmail account to spamminate everyone. This is the true innovation of gmail.

Re:competition

[tomhudson (43916)]

Poster wrote:

Too bad the invites will die once it moves out of beta, then.

Why should they stop the invite system? As I pointed out, it creates a "web of trust", and a traceable route for who invited who, so it's less likely that spammers will be able to use it in bulk.

Consider this scenario:

1. Spammer snags a gmail account.
2. Spammer gets invite credits
3. Spammer "invites" a dozen fake spam accounts to gmail
4. Spammer starts using those new acounts as response boxes for spam
5. Google flags this
6. Google deletes receiving accounts
7. Google notes that they all originated from invites from one account.
8. Google deletes that account as well.

End result: Spammer has no way to receive his (the vast majority of spammers are guys) responses, goes back to using shotmail or aohell accounts. This results in gmail accounts maintaining their perceived value.

Hopefully, someone from gmail will recognize the value of keeping the invite system, either exclusively, or alongside a seperate open system.

Anyone want to point this thread to the gmail developers?

Re:competition

[RevDobbs (313888)]

Do not send large attachments over email.

Again, do not send large attachments over email.

Nothing is worse then trying to download a really important email, but being stuck waiting for a hand full of large, mostly less-important messages to download. Ofoto [ofoto.com], Shutterfly [shutterfly.com], and others [google.com] offer free image hosting, allowing your friends & family the chance to view pictures at their leisure -- and often order hard copies as a bonus. Not everybody has broadband access, and us "Technology Haves" should be teaching the "have nots" to 1) not send huge f'in emails and 2) don't blindly open every attachment you get.

In conclusion, do not send large attachments over email.

Too little too late

[swerk (675797)]

Fortunately, I've snatched up a beta Gmail account and am finding it to be the bee's knees thus far. I've been fed up with Yahoo for a long time. Had I gone with Hotmail I'd have been even more fed up.

For several years I've had to trim all kinds of stuff out of my email archives due to the claustrophobic 4- and 6-meg limit on Yahoo mail. Then suddenly I log in and there's 100 meg available. Well that sucks, I've deleted maybe half that in stuff I'd rather have kept over the years. And it's still Yahoo; they still puke up obnoxious ads every chanse they get, and at the end of every single outgoing message.

On the other hand, since the dot-bomb, most over-the-web services have gotten crippled or disappeared entirely for non-paying users. It's a breath of fresh air to see some things actually improve, regardless Microsoft's and Yahoo's motives for doing so.

If an all but ad-free environment, a clean interface and the other Google niceties become competitive features that many webmail services mimmick, then great, everybody wins, including those unwilling to switch services. But for my money (or lack of it), I'd rather be signed up with an outfit whose mission statement amounts to "don't be evil" rather than "always be evil except to save face".

Re:Too little too late

[TheReal_BarkMan (779113)]

Is the bee's knees similar to the cat's ass?

If your not sure, sent an invite to gmail and I will do a thorough analysis for you! :-)

If you build it....

[JackJudge (679488)]

...they will come But what the feck am I gonna do with 250MB of spam ??

Re:If you build it....

[andhravodu (698763)]

While it's true that hotmail in its earlier version was a huge spambait, the recent experiences are pretty good. I recently opened a new account (completely new registration) and had one spam mail in 4 months. Now, i'm impressed. Oh wait, we shouldn't have got that one spam mail too...

Go Google Go!!

[MrRTFM (740877)]

Step 1 - on April 1st, give away 1G mail boxes to all - start with a small Beta group
Step 2 - invest in Hard drives, and wait until MS and others implement size increases
Step 3 - declare it was a joke all along
Step 4 - ???
Step 5 - IPO !!!

Re:Go Google Go!!

[LiquidCoooled (634315)]

The 1gb limit is simply a carrot for us all.

Most normal users won't get anywhere near filling a gMail account for a good long time.

Its used to show the difference between the good and the bad.

Now - when google move into ISP land, with 100mbit broadband i'll be happy :)

Re:Go Google Go!!

[pebs (654334)]

I'm planning to create 100 1GB accounts, and then back up my hard drive by e-mailing it to all these accounts.

capitalism's finest

[by Anonymous Coward]

250 MB email? I love competition. Not to mention that's one big storage dump on the net. Now let's see how the RIAA can find me transferring MP3's over e-mail

Re:capitalism's finest

[Ubergrendle (531719)]

Why MP3 trading is a foregone conclusion:
1. P2P Applications
2. Binary Newsgroups
3. Bittorrent
4. IRC
5. FTP
6. Messenger to messenger.
6. Now anonymous based e-mail accounts.

The RIAA is currently trying to sue users of #1. They might go after #3, 4 and 5. They can't stop #2 and #6. They've lost, whether you believe that mp3 trading is copyright infringement or not.

Yeah, but Gmail's better

[David Horn (772985)]

Hotmail and Lycos are missing the point here - people aren't flocking to Google cause of the 1GB of space; it's because of the innovative design; the powerful search; the conversation layout; the lack of intrusive ads etc.

They have to fix the fact that their services are crap before handing out space willy-nilly.

Not to mention....

[arcite (661011)]

Not to mention its less evil! When you use google, only part of your soul is consumed. Better than the alternative I say.

Re:Yeah, but Gmail's better

[LiquidCoooled (634315)]

This I agree with.

The main problem I have with hotmail is its lack of respect for sent mails, it is up to a user to say they want to save every outgoing message, and even then, they are deleted frequently.

It just stops it being usable for anything other than signups and notifications.

gMail has made it easy and fun once again, and I'm glad the others are panicing.

Re:Yeah, but Gmail's better

[LiquidCoooled (634315)]

Im already sorted for accounts thanks, and I see your point about pop access.

However, in googles case, leaving the mails ONLINE actually makes for a better solution, since taking the mail offline and into which ever mail applications store prevents the pigeons from sorting and searching my mail, it becomes just a dump, and for that, a smallish standard account is better suited.

I prefer having google searching my personal mails and its grouping and management are better than any of the offline pop mail programs I've tried.

There is room in this world for both types of account, for instance, I wouldn't even consider moving business mails onto ANY of the free providers, thats just suicidal, but for personal mails google just wipes the floor with everything else out there.

Re:Yeah, but Gmail's better

[trix_e (202696)]

GMail *is* better... much much better. it's quite possibly the best UI I've ever seen in a web browser. if you take a few minutes to figure out the shortcut keys, it's better than just about anything else out there. Yes, you can't format mail just yet, but still it is in beta.

it's fast, incredibly intuitive. I'm in love.

the only thing I didn't like was the lack of new mail notification, so I downloaded Pop Goes the GMail (windows only... one downside -- but I doubt its long before something like this comes along for other platforms) and it takes care of that for me.

In short I'm never going back to any other webmail service. It'll take me a lot to pry me away from GMail.

Re:Yeah, but Gmail's better

[garcia (6573)]

People are flocking to GMail because it is the geek thing to do. Everyone wants one and they will beg you for an invite (I know I just gave out my 6).

As far as the design of GMail I am not all that impressed. Search functions are nice and all but I don't use searchs that much. The "conversations" aren't exactly what I want as I would prefer standard folders. I certainly don't like not having an option to keep ALL old emails open in a conversation w/o having to click on them to "expand"). The filters are nice and seem to work well for my uses but I haven't played around with them enough to see just how useful they are.

I haven't received any spam but that's no surprise. I haven't had any issues at work but at home GMail seems sluggish. Almost too sluggish. I don't know why that is but there is a noticable lag after clicking on things at home before actions are taken.

The space is nice and all (and I am forwarding all mail from home -> GMail for now for permanent storage as a test) but it's certainly not necessary. They are going to eliminate it eventually claiming national security or kiddy porno/warez violations.

Hard disk manufacturers happy campers?

[jaf (121858)]

With this extra demand, will it lead to a faster curve towards even cheaper hard disks with even more space on them?

Time to invest in Seagate? :-)

Wouldn't it be funny

[ScottGant (642590)]

If Google all of a sudden now says: "Meh, we tried it out with the testing phase, and we've decided not to start a email service at this time".

Now that Yahoo and Hotmail and everyone else has done the "look, we're offering 1Gig storage too!"

This is all well and good, but..

[by Anonymous Coward]

There's more to GMail than pure storage capacity. Personally, i wouldn't consider switching back to Hotmail or any other service until they improve the system in some of the ways Google have -- such as the conversation system for tracking replies, and the searchable "All Mail" folder which holds both incoming and outgoing conversations.
Its funny -- in all the hyperbole about the disk space being offered, people are neglecting some of the real innovations/advancements GMail has managed.

Its good to see them changing....

[Cyb3rBull3ts (779853)]

Trying to save customers, but honestly, with a sleak, sexy UI of GMail, without those SUPER ANNOYING banners. 2GB of free space, or even unlimited wouldn't be enough to bring me over since those HUGE and OBNOXCIOUS banners are still there.

They have to Googleize, and learn that small, relavent banners produce more then spaming me with flashy popups that install spyware, and that Mozilla/GoogleToolbar will block.

But it is a step in the right direction.

Whats the diffrence?

[Viceice (462967)]

But what good is all that storage space without a proper way of archiving and accessing it?

Remember years ago when the max e-mail size wasn't 2mb and you suddenly got mail bombed? You had to go looking through 100's of pages of mail and deleting all the junk. All that work is enough to give anybody carpel tunnel syndrome. Also, Hotmail's recent restriction on opening only one page at a time only makes the matter worse.

The reason why Gmail can give 1GB of space is because it has developed an excellent system of mail archival, retrieval and display. So unless Hotmail changes its interface and pulls something as good as Google, we are soon going to see frustrated users shifting through many pages of spam.

Re:Whats the diffrence?

[wfberg (24378)]

To be fair, hotmail now has filters (hidden away in options) and lists mail "from my contacts" separately.

Many people are utterly startled when they find out hotmail has filters.. You can even apply them to old mail, not just new incoming messages.

Re:Whats the diffrence?

[superyooser (100462)]

You're exactly right. Google's competitors are falling into a trap. All that space is good only if it's organized and easy to search. Hotmail and Yahoo are digging their own graves by incorporating only one piece of Google's business strategy. Google has made clear their philosophy of why they're giving users a whole gigabyte. Google wants to leverage its superior searching ability. The other email providers don't have this! What are they thinking?

Google has pulled off a perfect rope-a-dope scheme, perhaps unintentionally. At first, GMail appears vulnerable since Microsoft and Yahoo could easily match its 1 GB storage. But that's not GMail's real strength. By its competitors raising their storage limits, they are *emphasizing* their own strategic *weaknesses* (no automatic organization, lousy searching), and Google will pummel them in the webmail market with its arsenal of exclusive advantages.

Is it really a good idea...

[91degrees (207121)]

To use a remote computer as permanent storage?

I just don't trust a free service provider to care too much about my data.

Hotmail sucks.

[autopr0n (534291)]

That's a little surprising, given that in the past they were so pressed for space that they decided to delete every sent message stored on their servers, so pressed for space that they decided to delete all mail after 45 days of not logging in, up from a year as it had been originally.

It took Google to do this!

[puke76 (775195)]

It took Google to do this. I mean, what were the chances of the incumbents doing this, if Google hadn't?
That's what happens when you sit around and be complacent.

Well done Google! The others are just playing catch-up.

Re:It took Google to do this!

[mjh (57755)]

Well done Google! The others are just playing catch-up.

You think so? I don't. I think the others are playing "user retention". They're trying to lower the impact of 1GB of space on their existing user base. Remember the incumbants have some inertia on their side. Most people don't want to have to deal with changing their email address. So if you make the storage disparity less, then it makes the cost of changing your email address more.

I think this will have the exact intended effect. Users were tempted to put up with the pain of changing their email address to get the huge increase in space. Those same users probably won't switch now, because they've not got 100x more space than they used to have. Space isn't an issue anymore. Changing your email address is.

IMHO, it's a good move by these guys.

I think that google's response to this should be to offer free, permanant email forwarding. Essentially, what they'd be saying is this: OK, yes, you have to switch your email address today. But it's the last time you'll ever have to switch your email address... EVER. Do this, and it lowers the long term cost of switching your email address to gmail.

$.02

Whoever you use for your free email, thank Google

[WIAKywbfatw (307557)]

In less than three months since their announcement of Gmail (April 1st) they have redefined what a free email service should provide, in terms of storage and attachment size if nothing else.

If Gmail hadn't appeared to shake up the status quo then Yahoo, Hotmail, etc would still be providing storage in the 2MB region rather than two or three orders of magnitude more.

Competition?

[MP3Chuck (652277)]

I bet this is a new and uncomfortable experience for Microsoft, eh?

fast. lightweight interface vs slow, ad-ridden one

[cryophan (787735)]

I have not seen gmail, but I know that one thing that attracted me to google at the start was that on my dialup connection, google was a FAST download, because of its lack of large graphical ads, etc., compared to the slow and bulky yahoo interface. The reason I avoid hotmail and yahoo mail now is because their interfaces are still ad-ridden and bulky and slow as hell on dialup.

If the Gmail interface is as fast as the google interface, gmail will eat hotmail and yahoo for lunch.

Re:fast. lightweight interface vs slow, ad-ridden

[value_added (719364)]

IIRC, yahoo recently advertised an "image free" interface. Never use it myself, but I just checked and there's only a couple of small gifs on the page.

It's funny...

[jb.hl.com (782137)]

The main people who won't switch away from Hotmail are the home users who like Hotmail. If you ask them if they want to try something better, after they complain about spam/not being able to send big attachments/spyware, their response will be "NO, I'M HAPPY...shit, this service has so much spyware..."

And now that Microsoft has disallowed signing up for a Passport with a non-Microsoft email address, tieing these (usually) MSN Messenger using Hotmail to Hotmail, we'll have lots of people locked into it, and they'll bitch, piss and moan at you to help them, then ignore you.

God, I love users who are deluded as to the utter shitness of their email service. Trust me, I know loads of them.

(I'll bet there's not one Hotmail account NOT covered in spam by now. They're all just spam buckets. Evil, evil Hotmail...we hates it my precioussssss...)

Paging Apple, paging apple

[weave (48069)]

Yo Apple, how about boosting the space us .mac PAYING subscribers get? They charge like $350 a year EXTRA for a gig of space. For $100/year you get 15 megs for mail and 100 megs for storage.

Granted, .mac does a shitload more than these others, but, hey, it's time to boost! :)

aventuremail

[zam4ever (595826)]

How about this aventuremail [aventuremail.com]?. 2GB free storage. cheers

In related news ...

[Octagon Most (522688)]

Google turns the tables to imitate its rivals. Changes motto to "Be Evil."

Reminds me of the Cold War

[dioscaido (541037)]

The US continually bought more and more weapons, which it would never use, so that Russia would follow suit -- until Russia bankrupted itself.

Gmail only has a couple of thousand users, so it can continue upping it's storage. Hotmail & Yahoo follow suit, but with it's million users, they asplode!

Is not size what matters....

[gmuslera (3436)]

... is to have an interface that makes sense to store and manage that size. With traditional mail client software (when only 300Mb of stored mail), if i have to retrieve something and not remember where it is and some clue on how it will look (with good details) i'm out of luck.

Google move was to give not only a big enough (?) space for mail, but also a interface to effectively deal with it, and...well, google to search within.

Is like those pills that have "the vitamin C of 40 lemons" or something similar, you can handle that in that way, will feel like a pill but will have the amount you need, but if a "traditional" vendor gives you to eat 40 lemons to get that amount of vitamin C at the same price, and try to eat all of this you will end with problems. The "content" will be the same, but in a way that will be hard to deal with it.

Re:Very good news

[by Anonymous Coward]

You should have just posted that in whatever your first language was, I'm sure more people could have understood it.

TRANSLATION:
Hmm. True. Imagine if Google hadn't launched GMail, you would still have only 2mb on hotmail, like you've had for the last 8 years! On the other hand most of the email I receive is SPAM or junk mail forwards (Almost 2mb worth), now I have 200mgs to look forward too, (wait until I get 2gbs! Haha :) )

Re:All the storage I need.

[mark_lybarger (199098)]

perhaps you're kidding, i dunno, but these free services do provide a lot. webmail, hosted on someone elses server has more reliable backup/recover procedures. in the 7 years i've used yahoo mail, i've _never_ has a message just disapear. i have had a hard drive crash w/o a backup anywhere in sight. and once i d/l my email from ISP and delete from their server, it makes it more challenging to get to the emails. hotmail/yahoo/gmail whatever is generally accessable anywhere you can get a public ip and out the firewall on port 80. though sometimes it may be more challening from some business who deem necessarry to block the well known webmail sites.

now, personally, i think that while gmail will be enticing (and i'll certainly sign up when given a chance), they'll need to really provide more than email. yahoo's calendar is really nice. it becomes a challenge now to simply forget when the date you officially became a domesticated individual.

Re:All the storage I need.

[PhoenixFlare (319467)]

You've obviously not actually used or looked into GMail very much, if at all - as has already been said, the real treat is not the 1GB storage.

The real good stuff comes in the form of a clean and fast interface, being able to use Google search on your mail, threaded display of your messages, having webmail that doesn't blast you with intrusive ads, and so on.

The brilliance behind this strategy...

[spoonani (786547)]

GMail's rollout appears to have a two-pronged approach: 1) Force other e-mail providers into costly capital expenditures. remember, 1gb of space initially for a couple thousand invitees is still less than 250 mb for millions of users. MS and yahoo's teams will no doubt be prodded to recoup their capital expenditures for all users, while gmail can stay lean and mean as long as it wants, while at the same time dictate the market structure. 2) generate ginormous buzz. As others have said, "why not go to spymac?" The answer for John Q. public lies in the difference in brand equity between spymac and google. If an average user has decided to make a switch over to a new e-mail provider, [e-mail] is "worth" more than [e-mail], regardless of features.

Re:Gmail=Good IDea, Poor Execution

[The Cydonian (603441)]

Actually, I'd say the Gmail public beta is one of the most successful viral marketing attempts I've seen in recent history. I mean, think about it:- had Google announced Gmail through a teeny weeny link on, say, labs.google.com, I'd probably have not bothered about it. OTOH, now that there's such a big hype factor about owning a Gmail account, I'm all ga-ga over it, virtually blackmailing a (Slashdot) friend into sending me an invite. :-)

Always remember; Gmail isn't just about the space, it's also about the UI as well. It definitely isn't easy for either Hotmail or Yahoo or any other webmail to compete against it easily.

Re:Gmail=Good IDea, Poor Execution

[scrm (185355)]

Google may be the poster child for a 'good' corporation but the roll-out of the gmail system is most definitely not one of the better acheievements. By pre-announcing gmail so far in advance, all the other free providers have now upped their storage. While gmail is still not publicly available.

I disagree totally. Gmail's two-phase rollout has given Google the option to observe the competition's response and react to it before their service is even officially launched (not to mention creating a buzz that would make Seth Godin [sethgodin.com] proud).

I've had a GMail account for about two months now and the system is in a constant state of flux. I've reported bugs one day and they've been fixed the next. Each and every bug report or piece of feedback gets a personal response from the Google team. They are very serious about perfecting the system.

The only reason Google are waiting so long to launch it is because they want to make sure it's the best webmail out there bar none. When it's launched, that's when the comparisons can really start. And that's when Hotmail et al won't be able to shake a stick at Gmail.

Don't be a Hater! ;-)

[Robert Petersen (790969)]

I think what Google is attempting to do with all that storage is get *life* users, i.e. people that will end up archiving 5, 10, or dare I say it, 15 years worth of email. In that span, I could see that 1GB of space coming in handy. One thing that I think Google could do to get me 100% on board would be a way to back up my email archive to my local PC. Not that i'm worried (*right now*) of Google going under, but who know's, 5 or 10 years from now when iv'e amassed a few hundred megs of email.....