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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. "
will we soon surf to yahoogle.com?
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
Yahoo have apparently denied that it is trying to beat Google at it's own game but said that it reflected the way subscribers are using email...umm, sure...we believe you..
Yahoo got that yet? Last i checked they didn't, which means you got to go through all of Yahoo's webmail interface.
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
So Yahoo, you want me as a customer? Here's what you have to do:
* remove those nasty ads
* filter spam better
* add POP3 access back (you were one of the first free online mailers with POP3, then you removed it so that people would use your crappy ad-full interface)
* (and speaking of which) improve your web interface to (at least) Google standards
When you're done, let me know and I just might give up my nice gmail account.
Just
Well that seems to be a big middle finger to Yahoo!'s paying Mail Plus users. I wonder if they're not going to try to offer something extra to them as well. Right now is sounds like the only difference would be POP access and extra filters.
GMAIL and Yahoo! mail have so much storage, I hear people are giving up on carrying around USB sticks and just using HTTP mail. I haven't heard of any security breaches where someone has had access to any appreciable number of files stored on their sites, but I suppose it's just a matter of time.
"Well..here I am..." - Jubal Early
Wonder if the fellow who wrote the Gmail File System will do an adaptation...
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Is the attachment size limit going to change?
Before you guys get in a huff about Yahoo! vs. Google mail services, it stands to reason that many of us have both, plus a hotmail account.
Yahoo upping online storage is a good thing for all of us.
Seriously, I only use Gmail as my email account but I use Yahoo's calendar and, I have been tempted to start using my account for emails.
here is The Register story, they add that paying customers will get 2 GB! (and also they extra family accounts), and it will now disinfect your attachments if they have viruses (it previously only scanned and warned you).
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Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
This is great. Hopefully google/yahoo/hotmail will all add more inovative features and the same low low price (feeding you ads is the price you pay).
Computer companies do amazing things when there is competetion..
The fact that is has taken Yahoo this long to play catch-up says a lot more than we may initially think. Many argue that the secret to Google's success is its highly adaptable and powerfull hardware architecture. They can increase their storage capacity very quickly just by adding more machines to its cluster. Yahoo has nowhere near the same adaptability as Google.
Other than for marketing of course.
I personally will probably never fill 250mb, let alone a gig.
I love gmail for all its features that Yahoo just doesnt have. I love the searching through archived mail. I love the labels instead of folders. And I -love- the threaded conversation view.
Yahoo would have to come up with some pretty killer feature at this point for me to even look at it. Even if it matched the featureset, it's still slow and cluttered compared to Gmail. And even then, I trust google more with all my mail than I do Yahoo.
Basically, just upping to a gig from 250mb...I could see this maybe stopping some Joe Sixpacks who use Yahoo now from switching to Gmail, but anyone who has actually used Gmail will probably never switch to Yahoo. The goodness just isnt there.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Did anybody move to GMail just because of the 1GB limit? I was a YahooMail user and was waaaayyyy off the 250Mb limit. The attractiveness of GMail for me was the snappiness of the responses, the threaded email conversations and general clean UI. Cranking YahooMail up to a GB will not change any of this.
They still won't be as good as Google.. stop trying!
I disagree from a business perspective.
Lots of people will stay with yahoo mail because it is difficult to switch. If there is no benefit, then there is little reason to make the switch in the first place.
Competition is good. Now, they will start competing on other features and the consumer wins in the end.
More
And that's just a start.
I don't respond to AC's.
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.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
AT&T worldnet just raised their email storage limit from 10Mb to 25Mb. Woohoo.
01/20/09
It's the functionality. To me, Gmail is more "stealthy" in its approach. It's just slick, fast, and doesn't force itself on me. "Labels" are truely innovative and implemented very well. "Search" is extremely flexible and useful. It is these features that help leverage the 1GB of storage into a really great tool.
Now, I admit that Yahoo does offer a very nice email service, and its features are very complete, but I simply cannot stand the ads. Gmail's unobtrusive ads are far better from a user's perspective.
Now, if Google would only fix their damned Forward function. If I receive a Rich Tect formatted or HTML formatted email, Gmail WILL NOT FORWARD IT without mangling the formatting (ie: it only forwards plain text.) This single problem prevents me from recommending Gmail to less-than-tech-savvy people, and unfortunatly, complaints and suggestions have fallen on deaf ears....
-Jim
GmailTips.com
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
In that sense you're right, but overall when comparing the two in terms of features and user-friendliness (from a new customer's perspective) I think Google wins out, I don't think Yahoo could really catch up now. But competetion is good, for sure.
There are 2 types of people in the world, those who find that stupid binary joke funny, and those who don't.
I'm so accustomed to arranging things into folders, and I can't for the life of me create any sort of organization in my Gmail box, and must resort to using the search tool to find anything.
Any tips on optimizing my Gmail experience? (I'm serious, any interface tips/tricks would be greatly appreciated)
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Yahoo has graphic ads.
Graphic ads SUCK.
What competition did Microsoft "shut down"? OS/2? BeOS?
I'm afraid those operating systems were halted by their own inadequacy. Microsoft won out simply because there was nothing better available. Now we have Linux, but Microsoft already had dominated teh market by the time Linux became a viable desktop OS.
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
Yahoo also appends an advertisement to the bottom of messages you send out.
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
Vulturo, Prince Of Darkness
Well, it's funny that they had that same quota from 1997 from then until last year when gmail's beta started growing, at which point they made it 250MB. Then they upped it to a gig - exactly what google offers - within a week of gmail's expansion to the general populace.
If you believe in that many coincidences, you must have been on the OJ jury, would explain a lot.
In my ongoing rail against the glossy waste of paperWired Magazine I get miffed about their anti-Google piece in last month's edition. This is just further proof to me that Yahoo! doesn't have much to offer other than a goofy logo, lackluster services and that stupid yodle. Here's a tip Yahoo!: It's not just the 1 Gig mail capacity that has people excited about GMail. It's the ultralight and very powerful UI design and feature set of their webmail application. Back when Yahoo! was riding high, the only other thing they had going for them was lots of venture capital. Always remember this rule: lots of venture capital does not guarantee success, a decent product, or sensible use of that capital. Always put your money on people who have actually produced something valuable.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
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.
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.
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.
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.
I use Adblock for Firefox.
Now I don't see graphical ads in yahoo mail.
From the CNN summary - " Company will join Google's Gmail as the only Web mail providers to offer 1GB of in-box storage."
Emphasis mine. I'll have to tell my webmail provider that they apparently aren't offering what they say they are, being that Google and Yahoo are the only ones.
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.
Yahoo mail also allows POP3 access.
w er=13273
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?ans
Yahoo has graphic ads.
Graphic ads SUCK.
Automatically reading all of your email so that Google can target text ads at you sucks even more. I'll take Yahoo's randomly-targeted graphic ads any day.
"Reading" isn't exactly correct, "scanning for keywords" is more like it. I imagine it's very similar to grepping for a list of keywords in your mbox file.
If you don't trust anyone to not read your email, run your own mail server.
There's a lot of posts here about how Gmail is much better because of its UI. While I readily admit the great implementation of the conversation views, the shortcut keys, the clean interface, the fast searching, and all the other little things that makes GMail a really great product, keep in mind that many of these things are web-specific implementations.
Google has done very well with their web interface, but also remember that Yahoo offers obscene amounts of services linked to your one Yahoo ID that Google just plain can't compete with at this point. The integration that Yahoo has with their vast array of services, in my mind, makes up for some of the email-specific things that they are currently lacking. For example, the ability for Yahoo to send you an SMS message when you have a new email, or when you have an appointment scheduled. Or maybe you'd prefer an email on that appointment - they will do that, too. Yahoo integrates everything it does very well - integration with Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Games, etc.
I'm not condemning Google by any means, but I do think that some of the views expressed on this article about Yahoo are somewhat shallow in their insights. Yahoo can, and no doubt will, continue to improve their mail service above the new 1GB storage. And Google will continue to develop all of those services that Yahoo is already offering. Either way, it's win-win for all of us.
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When Gmail started to become popular months ago, I couldn't find a place to get an invite and didn't know anyone who would give me one. I somehow ran into Yahoo China, and at the time they were offering 1GB of email space, while Yahoo over here was offering 250 MB.
Altavista is your best friend!
There are advantages to having both Yahoo and GMail. Personally, I have accounts with both services. I use Yahoo primarily for signing up for forums, sites; basically anything that would give me spam. When it comes to mail I actually want to read, I head straight for GMail. I have the GMail notifier set up to tell me when new mail is in my inbox, and I have configured Thunderbird to pick up all of my mail for me. There's really not much of a better setup, as far as mail goes. If I need a file stored, I get off my lazy ass and email it to myself, rather than sticking in in Yahoo Briefcase, because frankly I don't like having everything spoon fed to me. Messages I send do not have advertisements appended to them, I don't have to dodge banners to read my mail, and my spam filter has caught every piece to date. Oh, having POP3 without having to install third-party software is nice too. That being said, Yahoo offers an incredibly easy interface, and anyone using it that feels challenged by it will probably not need the 250 MBs of storage, let along a gig. Yahoo is for the technologically retarded, and fatcat techie wannabes.
Email storage is quickly headed the way of online service hours and cell phone plan minutes.
Once the company offers a quota larger than 99% of its users will use, then it can increase the quota arbitrarily without needing any additional resources to supply the (unused) storage space. After that, it's just a marketing exercise in using (pointlessly) inflated numbers to sell to new subscribers.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)