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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)."
Hrm...tough choice, i'd say. Heh, they are all going to be playing catch-up to Google for a bit anyway; hopefully we can see more (and better) deals in light of google bringing us such great things (like so many other company's have decided not to do, instead money-grubbing and pulling and biting and lying to get another dollar from you.
Big surprise there. Yahoo need to do something to remain competitive.
I'm personally waiting for gmail to come out of beta and then I'll probably move from yahoo to google locak, stock and two smoking spam filters!
Offtopic, but why does google engender a warm fuzzy feeling of trust whereas yahoo, hotmail and the rest "feel" like corporates out to make a quick buck? It's a totally false feeling, but it's happens...
...throwing down the gauntlet. I have had a Yahoo Plus account for a little over a year now, so I got my 2Gb space when I logged in this morning. At this point, Yahoo has the advantage of an online calendar (a great tool if you are a traveler)and the ability to sort your mail into folders. I also have a GMail account, mainly because it was offered to me. While the idea of that much space is appealing, I don't like not being able to sort my mail. Furthermore, I believe this encourages people to store documents online, a practice that is, IMHO, dangerous given the problems that Hotmail has had recently.
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
Thats not totally true. Sometimes I keep old e-mails for reference (i.e. any online purchases), contacts, etc. Yes I could transcribe them, but I would prefer, at times to keep the e-mail and should have the right. I do not think it is a solution to just delete emails that are old.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
The change seems to be quite inconsistent throughout their servers. I have several Yahoo accounts for different purposes, and when logging onto them today, sometimes it would show 100MB and upon going back to the Inbox page, it would show 4MB, sometimes the new stylesheet would load and other times only partially. Seems to be broken all over the place.
Actually, I think that's more a result of Yahoo migrating to the new system. I've seen the new interface from my friend's account like 6 hours ago and it looks pretty slick. He had thought Yahoo! was bugged but we kept refreshing and we were able to watch them migrate to the new interface in real time.
... they are still probably porting over some of the accounts ... I wonder why they couldn't make "global" changes that would affect all users at once, as it probably should be?
I logged into my account and it was still using the old interface and had the old 4-megabyte limit. It wasn't until I logged in like 10 minutes ago that I logged in to see the new interface, although a bit broken
Take off every 'sig'!
All your 'sig' are belong to us!
Of course, everyone and their dog can apply for a Yahoo! Mail account right now. GMail is still in beta at the moment. Yeah, I know, kind of spoils your joke, and you put so much effort into it too... :D
-MT.
-MT.
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)
Hmm. Now, let's figure out which business deal is better, shall we?
Do I either,
A) Pay $20 for a 2 gig Yahoo box, or
B) Open up 2 GMail accounts for free and still have 2 gigs of storage.
Now, the true genius will suddenly realize that if you open 3 accounts, that means you have 3 gigs of space, and that's more than 2 gigs that Yahoo offers. How many of you figured that one out?
Actually, for paying customers they have removed the adverts as well.
Thus, right now, today, I am sitting with a 2 gig mailbox with no adverts. Google will have to get their product out the door sharpish to overcome the inertia that Yahoo is creating right now.
Here's a snippet from my e-mail:
You are currently exceeding your Yahoo! Mail storage quota by a very large amount. You are only allowed -2048.0MB of storage but you are currently using 0.0MB of storage. Your account has been temporarily disabled from receiving new messages.
The easiest way to continue receiving your important email is to expand your mailbox. Yahoo! Mail offers 10, 25, 50 and 100MB of storage space starting at just $9.99/year.
Nice to know that I can only have negative storage. Looks like they want me to give them storage. Not exactly sure how I'm supposed to do that... At least it's just an account that comes with my DSL that I don't use.
I began using Yahoo! Mail years ago and I've had 6MB per email address (I've got two) ever since. When I signed my mother and father up to have Yahoo! Mail accounts two years later they were given 4M accounts.
The first thought I had though since being notified of the increase was, "How the heck am I going to keep track of all the junk I'll eventually have to delete?" My answer was, "To never allow it to clog in the first place by removing immediately any e-mails that I may want to save." The obvious answer.
IIRC, Yahoo only allows you to set up 10 rules for handling the email you receive. This is troublesome because now that we've been given so much free space, I know people will want to seperate their space by using folders - ideally, automatically - for just about everything and everyone they know. But, if 10 rules are the limit, I see in the future that limitations on space won't be the driving factor in attracting customers. Once again, it will all boil down to service and services available (options, rules, etc.) to the end user.
For those who might be curious, I found an easy way to get rid of ads when reading your gmail (if for some reason, ads really bother you).
Just ask everyone to put the word "died" at the end of their messages. Gmail has this filter that tries not to be too insensitive by plastering your browser with ads for caskets next to news that Uncle Bob just died, so I guess it searches for words like that.
I tried with the words "disaster", "died", etc. and they all caused ads to disappear.
It might be creepy though after a while if every email had the word "died" at the bottom.... )
But the other thing to not forget is that Yahoo is ONLY doing this in response to Gmail. Prior to that Yahoo was actually taking away features and making more things only available to paying customers. I've been a Yahoo user almost since the beginning and have been constantly disappointed with any service that I paid them for. They have a tendency to bait and switch, or simply discontinue a service when it doesn't perform as they expected. I used their text paging service (for the year it was available) their local dial-up service (ditto) and am currently using Yahoo domains (which have been lowering their price in an effort to prevent erosion, rather than adding features).
I don't give a company credit for innovation when all they are doing is responding to REAL innovation. Gmail, from what I've seen so far is better, faster, has an interesting alternative to folders which may prove to be more effective, and has a commitment to continue adding features to their free service. Google has no add on services that you can pay for and I think they intend to keep it that way. They have Yahoo and MSN quaking in their boots and I think thats a good thing.
I'll stick with Gmail until something BETTER, not just AS GOOD comes along.