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Hotmail Means to Double Gmail Storage

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the adding-pressure dept.

deputydink writes "Osviews reports that Microsoft's free email service, Hotmail, is throwing down to Google by increasing the free storage to 2GB! I wonder how choked the Hotmail Plus subscribers will be."

6 of 616 comments (clear)

  1. Re:That'll be nice... by REBloomfield · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I had an email telling me about the wonderful upgrades, but I haven't seen any yet, and my box is permanently around 85% full. Even with the spam filter cranked up, they still let threw the odd vew fival attachments that push me over the limit. And as you can see----^ I've moved to gmail...

  2. Couple a megachips... by lilmikey1982 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Ehh, I dunno. I call BS on that. I know that Microsoft will eventually have to increase the limit of space given, but I somehow doubt that a company that was charging money for a tiny bit of space is all of a sudden going to just give out 2 GB for free. Do we know who the contributor was? Also... in the article it says that Microsoft won't bother us with graphic ads. Again, BS. I see more ads on Hotmail than I do on some pr0n sites. I highly doubt they'll just drop them.

  3. Re:WAR! by Curtman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It may very well be an improvement on the UI. I wouldn't know, its impossible to sign up.

    I was interested when GMail was first announced, but if they're going to make me beg for an account, they can shove it.

    Hotmail sucks big time, but at least its accessible.

  4. Re:WAR! by manavendra · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I agree

    However, this isnt' simply about raising the stakes up to attract new users. This is also about retaining the existing ones - millions out there who are tired to Hotmail (simply because it was the first and at one time the only, free email service provider). Add to this those users who are tied to hotmail because of using MSN messenger as well.

    Now with Gmail offering such a vast leap over storage space, a large number of those users would be ready to migrate (no matter how painful it would be) to other email providers. However, if Hotmail provides them similar (or better) service (read storage - since that's the only thing that has been talked about most everywhere), they would have no reason to.

    --
    http://efil.blogspot.com/
  5. Re:WAR! by mgv · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's a war, but it's not going to be about storage. Gmail doesn't need to match Hotmail on the 2GB storage (at least yet).

    On the other hand, apples paid subscription service (idisk) with 100 MB of storage (At $99 /yr) starts to look a little paltry - It will be interesteing to see what they do in response to this.

    Michael

    --
    There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
  6. Re:WAR! by mgv · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What a brilliant comment. So if you only read the sports section of the newspaper the newspaper is a rip-off for having the nerve to charge you for all those pesky other pages and you should go around ranting that it is only a sports section, the rest of the paper doesn't exist?

    Whoa, hang back a second here. I'm not saying that the other bits of .mac don't exist. I am just saying that they are of relatively little value to me.

    But the flip side of the coin - are you seriously suggesting that you think that the 15MB of storage for eMails and 100MB of personal storage is enough for you? Well, perhaps it is, but it isn't nearly enough for me, nor is it enough for many others now. And if I subscribe to .mac and never use half the stuff, is this to apple's disadvantage?

    I'm not trying to shoot down apple, I am seriously happy with my powerbook and my wife uses her iBook like she has never used any other computer. They work, and I like.

    However, some things that apple do are crippled deliberately to promote further sales. iSync can sync your personal data to all sorts of stuff - your phone, your PDA, your idisk and your ipod - but not to any other external hard drive. Which is a pity if you want more storage than you can buy in an iPod. Likewise iTunes is the only client to stream audio to an airport express - but I didn't hear anyone on /. complain about the encryption on that being cracked.

    So I'm saying, yes, I want more storage, and I'm not paying money to apple until it offers a gig of storage on the iDisk for a little less than $350 per year (current pricing on website http://www.mac.com/1/mac_faq.html#upgradingstorage )

    And no, you can't get more than one gig on iDisk, probably because with their pricing model they know that nobody will ever take the subscription out.

    In other words - 1 GB iDisk $350 per year. 1 GB gMail - free. Something is wrong there with somebody's pricing model for such a difference to exist.

    And when apple realises this and drops its price a bit, more people (including myself) will pay them money for the services.

    Michael

    --
    There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.