Yahoo to Offer Unlimited Email Storage

Josh Fink writes to tell us that Yahoo has announced that they will be offering unlimited email storage starting this coming May. The launch is all a part of Yahoo's ten year anniversary. While not all users will see their storage caps disappear right away Yahoo is promising that this feature will eventually reach their entire population.

Re:Too bad we've already got gmail

[jimjamjoh]

Except that yours is a minority opinion: CNET [cnet.com] and PC Magazine [pcmag.com] both gave glowing assessments.

I use the new Y! Mail Beta too, and the reviews are right, it IS faster, and the "Web 2.0 cruft" that you disdain has markedly improved the usability of the interface (drag 'n drop messages into folders, yeah, who would want that?!).

Re:Maybe 12 year anniversary

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the 10 year anniversary of Yahoo email.

Re:Do I really need more Yahoo Space?

[Zwaxy]

1 TB is around 1,000GB or 1,000,000MB.

1,000,000MB / 5MB = 200,000.

I can't see how you could be wrong by a factor of 8. Can you? Did the 8-bits-per-byte thing trip you up? I can't see where else an 8 might have got involved here.

Maximum file size...?

[loimprevisto]

I don't come anywhere close to filling up my current yahoo mailbox because of the annoyingly low maximum size of file attachments. If I could easily use this unlimited storage to send file attachments of a useful size, then this might actually be a helpful thing for me.
Perhaps its because of a limited exposure to web email sites, but I seem to be one of the few people who likes Yahoo!'s interface... the only other web mail address I have is at http://www.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklm nopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com/ [abcdefghij...fghijk.com] and that's not practical for ever day use.

Hmm... reading all the comments here has me interested in trying something new. Would someone please send me a gmail invite to loimprevisto at yahoo.com?

FUSE and Yahoo?

[FuryG3]

So, FUSE [sourceforge.net] (Filesystem in Userspace), which can be run on a number of platforms, allows you to mount your Gmail account like a drive. If you copy data to this disk, it uploads it to your Gmail account as a message/attachment. So now you have a ~3GB hosted virtual drive, albeit with pretty slow access speeds... Pretty wild stuff.

Unlimited messagees on Yahoo makes me hope someone is working on a libYmail component, allowing FUSE to do the same with Yahoo Mail. Got a 15 gigs of TV shows/movies/porn which you've been thinking about deleting anyway? Let Yahoo have them!

From this other article [techcrunch.com]:

Users are subject to Yahoo's abuse policies, which requires users to follow "normal email practices" and not engage in activities like using Yahoo mail for basic online storage (a number of services have popped up to help people use Gmail for this purpose). Abusive accounts will not be summarily deleted - users will be notified by Yahoo and/or accounts suspended, but users will still have access to the data.

If you get caught, Yahoo seems to allow you to pull the data back down. If they won't (I'm going to guess they're going to change that policy pretty quick), then oh well, you were going to delete that stuff anyway! :)

Self hosting

[bwilliams80]

I would consider the average ./'r above the curve with technology. who here doesnt own there own domain name with their own email services?

Re:there's always a price

[kosmosik]

Side note: actually you can use GMail with your own domain. You just point your DNS server to serve MX records pointing to Google servers and use Google Apps For Your Domain for free with usual GMail account (web, pop, smtp access). I am using it right now with my private domain and I am perfectly happy with it. The servers are fast. Never I've occured any downtime. No ads (I use POP mainly). Spam filters are excellent. Also it is nice that when I decide to use GMail via webmail all my sent mail is also there! GMail (for your domain) rules here.

So maybe just get a domain, use Google to serve mail for that domain and then *if* Google decides to charge you for POP access *then* get mail hosting somwhere else. At least you will keep your domain and addresses.

Re:New business plan

[Ngarrang]

There has got to be some small print. It is Yahoo!, there's just gotta be.

Personally, I would be happier if they would apply all their resources to better spam prevention. I had to retire my long-time Yahoo! account due to more spam than real messages. I dutifully reported all spam via the SPAM button, to no real effect. Yahoo's policies for putting ads in messages is also a tad disruptive.

Yahoo has already lost me as a customer, but maybe this "unlimited" storage deal with draw some new untainted blood to them.

Re:Too bad we've already got gmail

[ralmin]

(11) You still can't POP mail from Yahoo without paying $20/year. It's called lock-in. I avoid lock-in. Same is true of MS.

Not if you use Yahoo Australia (mail.yahoo.com.au). I use Yahoo POP mail all the time and I've never paid them a cent.

Here [yahoo.com] are the settings you'll need.

Server Settings
Incoming Mail Server (POP3): pop.mail.yahoo.com.au
Use SSL, port: 995

Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP): smtp.mail.yahoo.com.au
Use SSL, port: 465, use authentication

Account Name/Username: ******
Email address: ******@yahoo.com.au
Password: Your Yahoo!7 Mail password

Even though it says you should use SSL on those ports given, in fact it works with normal plain-text POP3 on port 110 as well. And you can just use your ISP's SMTP server to send mail if you like.