Yahoo Ups Mail to Match Google's Gig

Bruce Young writes "Yahoo said late Tuesday that it will provide 1 gigabyte of storage for each free e-mail account. The current limit is 250 megabytes. The expanded storage which will be available in mid-April will enable Yahoo to catch up with online search engine leader Google. "

Pop Access?

[FinchWorld]

Yahoo got that yet? Last i checked they didn't, which means you got to go through all of Yahoo's webmail interface.

Re:So "FU" Mail Plus users?

[davidmcg]

The Register [theregister.co.uk] states paid subscribers are getting upgraded to 2GB and can send attachments upto 20mb.

Re:Pop Access?

[wscott]

use fetchyahoo [twizzler.org]. I use that to automatically forward all my yahoo mail to my gmail account. ;-)

The gmail web interface just blows aways anything yahoo provides. The 1Gig is not the real selling point. Now I just wish ebay would hire the google engineers to redesign their interface.

Re:Yahoo catch-up TODO list

[Anonymous Coward]

just use those cool guys:

www.loftmail.com [loftmail.com]

Re:So "FU" Mail Plus users?

[dubiousmike]

I know I have been able to send at least 25 mb size files with gmail....

Like the size matters?

[WIAKywbfatw]

There's more to Gmail than the 1GB account limit. The sooner that Microsoft, Yahoo and everyone else realise this the better.

I've had a Hotmail account for almost 10 years now (way before Microsoft got it hands on it) and a Gmail account for just under a year too. In the last three years Hotmail has been going backwards, especially with regards to interoperability with browsers other than MSIE (every iteration has broken something or another) and core features. It's clear that Microsoft's strategy is to push people to pay for the premium Hotmail Plus service and to do that it's happy to let the free service atrophy to the minimum possible standards. Meanwhile, with Gmail the focus seems to be on providing as good a HTML-based email application as possible.

I haven't had as much experience of Yahoo's mail service (I've got an account, but only because one was created automatically when I wanted to use another of their services) but from what I've seen it's little different to Hotmail.

Gmail wins vs Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, etc in so many ways. The interface, the features (message threads, labels, etc) are just superior to what the competition has to offer and it's these reasons rather than the default account size that makes Gmail the best at what it does.

Re:Google catch-up TODO list

[Laurentiu]

Dude, you're missing the point. I don't want an e-mail account that also does dishes. Oh wait... Damn! Anyway, nothing you have there on your list is actually an improvement of the mailer interface. I don't care about Outlook - although, by the way: You can import address books from Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo!, orkut, and other services to your Gmail account. I don't need a messenger to read e-mails. I don't want alerts and reminders on my cell phone/PDA/whatever - especially when some spammer decided to spoil my dinner. And if I want to be able to read mail on my PDA, all I need is a POP3 enabled mailer. I don't want to store my files online - although I could use GmailFS, or just send myself an e-mail with attachments. And I certainly don't care about discussion groups integrated in my e-mailer - although, again incidentally, reading discussion groups in GMail is a treat, due to the interface. Sorry, no go. Try again?

Re:Size doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

"Labels" are truely innovative

Well, they were when Eudora did it back in the 90s.

Re:I don't have a yahoo account...

[bwcarty]

Yahoo also appends an advertisement to the bottom of messages you send out.

Re:you think so?

[Vulturo]

Offtopic, I guess: I agree Gmail, is the slickest webmail experience. The idea is you basically create a set of basic labels (home/work/personal/etc...) and label every incoming mail that comes, and then 'archive it' - it is equivalent to filing it in a folder, except for the fact that one message can have more than one label and be in more than one'folder' at the same time. For more, check Gmail's help and getting started sections

Re:you think so?

[thebudgie]

Labels. I use labels for all my mail and it is sort of like arranging things into folders, but you can have the same message available in two different folders without having to copy it. For example a message could be both "Important" and "Work" labeled or something.

Re:you think so?

[0siris]

I had the same thing when I first logged in. I tend to keep all mail that's useful in a folder called "Reference" and delete the rest, and was confused when I realised that Gmail wouldn't let you make folders.

A good way to do things is not change for your old system - use a label in place of where you would use a folder before. You could have a "Work", "Family" and "Friends" label and either apply them to mails manually or set up a filter, just like with the folders where you manually dropped them in or set a filter up.

Th advantage is that you can apply multiple labels to a mail. You're best friend also works with you and wants to organise a night out with some people from work and more of your friends? Label it "Work" and "Friends". Using the folder system you could only have put it in one folder, unless you made a copy and put it in both.

Re:Ooooh good...

[earthbound kid]

...that means more room for all the spam, pr0n and other guff I get cos of using my yahoo account to 'register' for stuff. Even better - I only have to visit it once a year or even every two to empty it all out.

I know you're just trying to be funny, but actually Yahoo doesn't count the stuff in its spam box towards your 250mb total, so you already didn't actually have to empty it unless you wanted to. I don't know if the new TOS with the gig will change this though.

Re:Failure is imminent.

[phlyingpenguin]

tip: while shift clicking to read a message doesn't work, ALL composing can be done in a seperate window. Just hold shift while you press (or shift+the hotkey) the reply/forward button. You'll have your message up for reference, and your composer up for typing.

If you want to be ticked with anything abuot GMail, try cleaning up your mailbox when you get from half to all the way full of archived (unlabeled) messages. Have fun deleting 20 messages at a time from the search window.

Re:I don't have a yahoo account...

[umpa]

I use Adblock [mozdev.org] for Firefox.

Now I don't see graphical ads in yahoo mail.

Hotmail prevents searching at 10mb of mail

[purduephotog]

I just went a few rounds with hotmail's CSRs- the mail search feature has disappeared.

So I wrote and asked, and they said after 10 meg you can no longer search in the message body, just subject and to/from.

They then point to a little known clause in section 11 of their TOS- Hotmail can do anything to their service they want to without informing said end users.

Full conversational email available (in broken indian-ese) if you'd like it.

Re:So "FU" Mail Plus users?

[Tim Macinta]

My Mail Plus account was upgraded to 2G last year, whenever it was that they last increased their free storage. Note that The Register doesn't say that Mail Plus users are getting "upgraded", just that they will be getting 2G. I would guess that this means that either we won't be getting another bump in storage or Yahoo! hasn't announced that yet (or that The Register is unaware of it, at least).

Re:Pop Access?

[Bronster]

Disclaimer: I work for FastMail.

If you want control over your email (and no evil search engine companies leveraging their giant database of email for nefarious purposes, natch) you're better off with something like FastMail [fastmail.fm]. The free offering isn't quite so fancy, but the paid options rock.

In particular, our highest fee paying accounts now get to send and receive up to 50MB of attachments with an email, and that's a full 50MiB (including room for encoding in the Postfix limits)

Our interface is more designed around the IMAP protocol than Gmail, since that's what we use internally - and we offer (optionally) encrypted IMAP for everyone and encrypted POP & Auth SMTP for all paying users.

You also get a web site and file storage space which you can access directly from emails to attach or detach files, etc... but I'm not going to detail all the features here - just point out that the big names don't always offer the best features.

Re:I don't have a yahoo account...

[ZiakII]

Yahoo mail also allows POP3 access.

Google does allow this as well, I just did it for my home and work computer 1 month ago, below is the attached site that shows you how to do so.

http://gmail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answ er=13273 [google.com]

Re:Google catch-up TODO list

[snorklewacker]

Data mining is analysis of trends across many data points (and "dimensions", but that's going a bit too far in). Scanning for keywords in a single message and fetching related ads, then forgetting about them, is about as much data mining as grep is. Actually less, since grep would work across multiple files, and gmail ads don't.

I find the notion a tad creepy, yes, but I've used gmail over a year and I've actually noticed the ads maybe once. This is far better than yahoo's garbage. Yes, I could adblock them, but I believe in letting them operate as they choose, and letting myself choose someone different for that. That said, I might toss yahoo twenty bucks for a year of a 2g mailbox, since I do like their address book better than google's.

Re:Pop Access?

[yuting]

I've used FM for a few years. Apart from all its wonderful features some drawbacks are constantly overlooked:

Limited support for International languages (i.e. Unicode) due to underlying Perl libraries.

Less-than-fancy interface - say what you like, LOOK definitely counts. Speed isn't an issue for most connections.

No full-text search : understandable, Google index your mail for profit, Yahoo has graphic ads, FM can't do that.

Domain not easy to remember - .fm is unusual, most other choices are unfamiliar to general public (i.e. friends who need to send you email.)