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Yahoo Boosts Email Space in response to Gmail
coleslawjoe writes "This article at New York Times explains that Yahoo has decided to boost their E-mail space (Soul sucking registration required) from their current 4 megabytes to 100 in response to Gmail. They are also planning to offer 2 gig mailboxes for $19.99(USD)."
What makes Gmail incredible and revolutionary is the search features, the amazing interface, the threading, the labeling, and the tried and true "google minimalism."
Getting 1000mB's of space is just a side effect, that's there because gmail makes it desirable to archive multiple entire mailing lists.
Yahoo! is missing the point.
Yahoo gives a warning when your mailbox reaches a certain size anyway, so it's easy to do some quick maintenance like delete that email with the absurdly large attachment to get the space back. But 100megs will certainly help.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
That's cool. It'll be nice not to have to clear out my Yahoo! inbox every week. This will probably stop me migrating. After all everyone already knows my @yahoo.com email address.
However, at some point my 100Mb box will be full, and I'll want to get it down to, say 50Mb. At which point I very much hope there'll be some decent new tools for bulk deletion. The idea of trying to free up 50Mb by clicking through page after page of email going "select... delete..." does not appeal.
All superficial jabbing aside... The 100 megs is here ~today~, coupled with some of the best spam-filtering available, and without some of the privacy issues that will cause problems for gmail overseas.
I'll take "Free existing cool service" over "Free theoretical awesome service" any day.
~D
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I doubt it. People don't like changing their e-mail address, any more than they like changing their phone number, and anyone stuck with 4MB will find the new 100MB ceiling massively bigger. Yahoo are very effectively protecting their installed userbase.
Because installing sendmail and some spam filter is non-trivial, and often a pain in the ass, and you have to worry about system security, patching, maintenance...
I'm seriously considering shutting down my own mail host because I've moved it three times in the last year, and every time I set it up again, I wonder why I'm putting all this effort into it.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
However, with this move they're highly likely to retain their current paying customers. People who were paying for 20M get 2G for the same price. It's suddenly no longer worth the hassle to get an invite to Gmail, nor are you likely to move over once Gmail is public. Changing an email address is a pain, and if you were willing to pay before, you're likely to be willing to continue.
Isn't all that impressive? Everytime I show it to people and show them all of the things it lets you do, they all start begging me for an invite. The Gmail interface is very utilitarian, much like their search interface. It also loads a *lot* faster than Yahoo!'s
There were other changes to Y! Mail today that weren't announced, including an updated interface and an increased message size limit (was 3MB, is now 10MB).
:)
:) Not sure if that is from them updating or what, but it was annoying enough.
Yahoo also recently decided that any messages that get filtered to your Spam folder no longer count towards your maximum email limit - a change that had a HUGE impact on how often I have to check my email. I have a 6mb free yahoo account, for some reason, but would have to check my mail daily to prevent any legitimate mail from being blocked when my box filled. Since the change, I haven't seen my limit go up by 1%
With 100MB and this new rule, I definately wouldn't have to leave Yahoo! Mail for lack of space. However, there are plenty of reasons I'll be moving to gmail upon release anyways. Yahoo, if you're listening, here goes:
1) Large and Obnoxious flash ads. These should have died with the dotcom era.
2) When switching accounts, for instance when my mother checks her email, I have to first click the [Logout] link, then I have to click your "Return to Yahoo! Mail"-link in order to enter the new login info. Of course this page has many ads, all of which I ignore. I'm not changing logins so that I can save 25% on car insurance, or whatever you seem to think I'm interested. I've never intentionally clicked on a single one of your ads, btw.
3) I have to enter my password once a day? My computer is secure, so feel free to save my password for the next 30 years if you'd like. Or at least give me the option to do so, because that's what I would like.
4) The stability this morning was crap
5) The new color scheme on the front page is, for lack of a better word, gay (it's light purple, ffs). The rest of the 'new' UI is... pretty, but I don't see any changes besides rounder triangles.
All of this aside, the one major improvement that would make me consider switching to any mail service is an improvement over my current spam detection rate. It's at about 95% blocked now. If any other webmail services can improve on that without more false-positives, I'm sure they'll make plenty of devoted fans.
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Actually it might. Right now, only beta testers can migrate to gmail. But most people can't. So they can't weigh whether the gmail service is better/worse than yahoo. As a consequence, people may discover that 100MB of mail space is all they need. If they're used to 6MB of mail space, 100MB is a huge increase. The decision isn't just between an additional 94MB and 994MB. It's between:
- 1000GB
- 100MB + keep current email address
Don't discount the cost of switching your email address. Keeping your email address is probably worth a whole lot more to most people than an additional 900MB of disk space... especially if they've been getting by with 6MB of disk space.IMHO, this is a really good move on Yahoo's part. It will be interesting to see how well it works.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
It's the other features such as Search, Labels, Conversations, Keyboard Shortcuts, and a lightning-fast interface that leverage the larger storage space. Anyone can offer tons of space, but unless you provide tools to effectivly utilize it, it's just space.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
I don't understand the need for these gargantuan email boxes. My personal (non-work) IMAP mailbox has mail dating back to July 2002 (all of my email before that is archived and I never look at it), and it's just under 60 megabytes. At that rate, I would reach Yahoo!'s limit by the end of 2008, at which point I would probably just archive my email again. My work email is an entirely separate, company-provided account, but I still only have 186 megabytes of email going back to May 2000. 46.5 megabytes per year.
I think if you're using 1-2 GB for your email, then you should consider some non-email ways of managing your data. There are already many sites on the internet that archive mailing lists, so there's no need to keep around a personal copy of list mail. Purging the Trash and deleting spam messages helps to save space. Instead of emailing large files, consider serving them up on the web, ftp, etc. Even if you do email large files, there's no need to keep them in your mailbox after they are downloaded. Save them to your computer, burn them to a CD if needed, and delete them.
Then again, maybe everyone else on the internet is just way more popular than I am.
Yahoo
Yahoo is hoping that increasing the storage space to 100MB will keep a lot of people from switching to Gmail.
Gmail