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.

Comments

New business plan

[Harmonious Botch]

1) Offer backup services for a modest fee 2) Mail them to my yahoo account 3) profit

Re:New business plan

[iadude1010]

cp internet* mylogin@yahoo.com backups are good

Re:New business plan

[Anonymous Coward]

mark this day on your calendar: the day slashdot died after Harmonious Botch discovered a way to effectively modify your original post by using the sig.

Re:New business plan

[timster]

You must be really, REALLY new here.

Re:New business plan

[Viper Daimao]

Finally a storage that can hold all my porn!

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:New business plan

[Tim Browse]

People still view slashdot sigs? I turned them off after the n'th movie spoiler I saw.

Re:New business plan

[Lord Flipper]

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

I don't know about 'fine print', but there is sub-text, and it goes like this: "We have the world's shittiest SPAM filtering, and, frankly, we need the space!"

Nice idea.

[crazyjeremy]

I am offering unlimited free $1 bills to anyone who leaves intelligent replies to this comment. While I may not send yours to you right away I will try to send it eventually.

Re:Nice idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

I beg to disagree with your assertion that you will send unlimited $1 bills to posters of intelligent comments. I move that the set of all existing dollar bills is countable, since it has a one-to-one correspondence with the algebraic group Z. Ergo, by modus ponens, you cannot have unlimited dollar bills. If you did, a simple reductio ad absurdum dictates that they'd have no value, and therefore I would not want them anyway.

Re:Nice idea.

[icepick72]

Unlimited $1 bills, or unlimited pennies, or unlimited $20 bills, or unlimited flecks of gold ... does it really matter if indeed it is unlimited?

Re:Nice idea.

[Dunbal]

If you did, a simple reductio ad absurdum dictates that they'd have no value, and therefore I would not want them anyway.

      Bravo Sir, stated like a true Nerd!

      PSST: I'll have his!

Re:Nice idea.

[Pollardito]

You do realise that the rollout of the previous upgrades in mailbox size didn't all happen in one go as well, right?

exactly! the previous rollouts came out overtime as they put into place the infrastructure to handle the new size, so i anticipate that they will also roll this one out as infinite space becomes available for more and more users

does anyone know if there is any truth to the rumor that Google is going to save costs on storing gmail accounts by storing everyone's email in one huge Yahoo mail account?

Re:Nice idea.

[God'sDuck]

Unlimited manure would probably be less desirable.

Depends -- does it have to be sent to *my* address?

Re:Nice idea.

[AndersOSU]

Wouldn't that only be a problem if intelligent comments on slashdot were not countable? I've been counting since sometime in 2004, and I've still got plenty of unused fingers.

Re:Nice idea.

[cptgrudge]

I've been counting since sometime in 2004, and I've still got plenty of unused fingers.

Don't be modest. Everyone likes the smell of their own brand.

Re:Nice idea.

[nine-times]

But then they'd have equal access to unlimited pennies, and they would make a similar deal with someone else to shovel the unlimited pennies. This chain would continue until everyone had access to the pennies, and because of this, the pennies would be worthless, and no one would ever shovel them.

Do I really need more Yahoo Space?

[lecithin]

One of my yahoo addresses I have had for about 9 years. I just opened it up and looked:

Inbox - 7145 UNREAD messages (99% spam)
Bulk - 2547 UNREAD messages (about 99% spam)

Obviously, I don't use this account all that much. My point is that at least in my case, this extra storage will be just wasted.

I read this as a marketing move that really won't do a thing for me or many of the other users.

Re:Do I really need more Yahoo Space?

[flynt]

Isn't it killing you that you have 71 legit messages in there?

Re:Do I really need more Yahoo Space?

[rhartness]

Not really. They probably won't even increase the storage size of there servers any more than they typically do. My guess is that they've noticed that most users (probably in the neighborhood of 99.99%) aren't anywhere close to their max usage and that offering this 'feature' is good simply for advertising and attracting new customers. The really limit is the size of the individual emails themselves. If you are limited to 5MB of space/per email, you would have to have about 25k 5MB emails to fill one TB. That's not going to happen, even if your account is a ten year old spam catcher.

Re:Do I really need more Yahoo Space?

[suv4x4]

My point is that at least in my case, this extra storage will be just wasted.

I wonder, when we're talking about unlimited and dynamic storage, can we ever talk about "extra storage being wasted". It kinda clashes with my logical units.

They don't pre-allocate infinite number of bytes for your account, which will go "wasted".

The only thing that changes is their marketing message, nothing really goes to waste, as the usage pattern of the majority of users won't change a zilch.

Re:Do I really need more Yahoo Space?

[Pollardito]

They don't pre-allocate infinite number of bytes for your account, which will go "wasted". they don't pre-allocate space, but the amount of spam that can accumulate in accounts that are effectively dead has no ceiling now. i wonder if they're limiting the amount of unread email that an account can accumulate just to give them a boundary that they can put onto accounts like that?

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.

Re:Do I really need more Yahoo Space?

[MMC Monster]

More likely the spam filter was wrong about 1% of the time. :-)

Too bad we've already got gmail

[atomicthumbs]

I've tried Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Mail Beta. They were actually my first email accounts. Somebody sent me a gmail invite a few years ago and I've never looked back. The yahoo interface is AWFUL.

Re:Too bad we've already got gmail

[eln]

I actually like the old Yahoo interface: it's simple, clear, and easy to use. Also, the ads are easy to block.

The new Beta is terrible, though. It's slow as hell, and it's so cluttered with useless "Web 2.0" cruft that the actual viewing area for the message is ridiculously tiny. If they decide to switch to that format permanently, and don't give an option to keep using the old interface, I am going to have to stop using Yahoo for my email. That would really suck, since I've been using that email address for 10 years.

Re:Too bad we've already got gmail

[jimjamjoh]

Except that yours is a minority opinion: CNET and PC Magazine 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: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 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.

I'd like a couple ...

[tekkguy]

I'd like a couple of those unlimited GB hard drives. You know, just in case I fill one of them up ... oh, wait. Nevermind.

Fantastic!

[Dunbal]

Great! Now I know where to store all that kittie po...uhh, nevermind.

Re:Fantastic!

[nine-times]

Kittie or Kiddie? Either way.... you sick bastard!

Re:Fantastic!

[networkBoy]

Parent NSFW

Re:Fantastic!

[Dunbal]

Kittie or Kiddie? Either way.... you sick bastard!

      I can't help it! I just can't get enough of that pussy...

Re:Fantastic!

[sootman]

'Sucks' is in the eye of the beholder. Here are my favorite Yahoo! features that kill Gmail:
- one click to sort by sender, size, date, subject*
- I can open messages in tabs or new windows

Paid-for service removes on-screen and in-message ads. I'm sure some people see it as a shortcoming of Gmail that they *don't* give the option to pay money for no ads. $20/year? The service is good and I don't mind paying for extra features (more storage, more filters, no ads in outgoing messages, choice of return addresses.)

That said, I prefer Yahoo's old interface to the beta. I hope they never get rid of it. Then again, it's not like the structure of email will drastically change, so they should be able to keep the old interface alive forever.

* Seriously--am I blind, or is this most basic of all features missing? Am I the only one who does this?

Too Little Too Late

[deadmongrel]

I had been using yahoo Mail since 1997. Yahoo had the best(well atleast to me) email service for years. Then they decided to go with flash based in-your-face ads. Then they came up with an desktop client look-alike which was bulky and pain in the neck. I am never going back to yahoo mail.

By sacrificing usability Yahoo! wanted to make a quick buck. Bad choice and unfortunately Yahoo! did not learn from hotmail. I am still amazed at how many people still use hotmail.

Re:Too Little Too Late

[imaginaryelf]

Amen. The "new" email interface is so slow and heavy.

They pulled the same to crap to tv.yahoo.com.

Yahoo should remember, "Don't fix it if it ain't broke!"

Re:Too Little Too Late

[hey!]

Yahoo and Gmail have two different approaches. Yahoo tries to be more integrated from the get go. Early on they provided a combination of email, full featured PIM, on line file storage and notepad. It's actually quite a useful set of features. I also like that I can synchronize PIM data with my PDA.

Google's approach to integration is more incremental. They build an application more or less as a stand alone entity. The result is that if email is the only thing you really care about, Gmail provides a far cleaner interface.

The pitfall with Yahoo's approach is that it is inherently more complex. It doesn't help that the first versions of their beta interface were horribly slow, but the worst decision was acting as if this were the late 90s and trying to be the user's portal to the Internet. Not that there is anything wrong with trying, but when the user wants his email, he doesn't want to wait for the top stories from sports and entertainment to load. Making the user wait for content he hasn't asked for to get content he has asked for was a bad, bad mistake.

Overall Yahoo offers a better package of services. Google provides better individual services when it has a comparable offering. If you just want email, Google is the choice for you. Yahoo should be a viable alternative, but they've chosen to magnify the downsides of their offering.

Maybe 12 year anniversary

[carlivar]

Where does this anniversary stuff come from? Yahoo's 10 year anniversary was TWO YEARS AGO. Maybe this is a 12 year anniversary feature!

Re:Maybe 12 year anniversary

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the 10 year anniversary of Yahoo email.

unlimited

[flynt]

Whenever something says 'unlimited', don't you just want to know, "What really is the limit?"

Re:unlimited

[Spudtrooper]

If it really were "unlimited," they would probably attract more attention by saying "1 terabyte" or "10 terabytes" or "ONE MILLION terabytes." "Unlimited" just sounds less impressive than a huge limit.

And for all those complaining about the ads on Gmail, try the CustomizeGoogle plug-in for Firefox. It even gets rid of the counter on the Spam box.

Re:unlimited

[tompaulco]

Whenever something says 'unlimited', don't you just want to know, "What really is the limit?"
Exactly. Like when I got my AmEx card and they said no limit (and still advertise as such on their commercials), I found that the limit was somewhere under $2000 because they wouldn't approve my charging a laptop on my AmEx. I eventually was able to raise my unlimited limit by faxing them a copy of my bank statement showing available funds in the bank.

Re:unlimited

[amazon10x]

There's only one way to find out! I set up an account but it might take a bit to hit the "Unlimited" status. However, it starts at 1GB so we might as well get started right away. Send mail to TheLimitAsSlash.Approaches@yahoo.com. Be sure to add attachments!

there's always a price

[Ginger Unicorn]

i just had to switch to gmail today ,as yahoo decided to start charging £12 a year for POP access.

assholes.

Re:there's always a price

[suv4x4]

i just had to switch to gmail today ,as yahoo decided to start charging £12 a year for POP access.
assholes.

Very smart move, when gmail starts charging for POP3, will you move again? You always pay, one way or the other, if you honestly believe Google will forever let you use gmail without looking at their ads or paying them something, you're delusional.

It's simple: put your mailboxes on your own domain, and pay for hosting on that domain. You pay, but you have full control over the mailboxes, and you can put a site (or sites) up without extra cost.

Re:there's always a price

[kiwimate]

i just had to switch to gmail today ,as yahoo decided to start charging £12 a year for POP access.

assholes.

Right, imagine the nerve...they decided to start charging a nominal fee for a specific remote method of access to their otherwise entirely free e-mail service.

Fine, decide it's not worth it, either dispense with the service or graciously move to a different service. But why be petty about it and call them names?

And, as you say, there's always a price. Same with gmail. You're the consumer; decide whether the service is worth the price and act as you see fit on that basis.

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.

hmm

[Knara]

I wonder if this will fall under the "in our contract it doesn't legally say 'unlimited' " bit. I still get annoyed when I think back to the days of dialup when an ISP I used that advertised unlimited connection times sent me a nasty email because I stayed online for days at a time without disconnecting, saying that "unlimited doesn't mean unmetered"... as if that mattered to me... metering only is an issue when I pay for something according to the meter reading.

Anyway, I don't really see this as a huge boon. I don't even use 1% of either my gmail or my yahoo account. Are there really people who NEED 10gig+ mail storage?

yahoo e-mail addresses, the new DMZ?

[Coraon]

ok, so how about this one? 1) Pirate a piece of data 2) Upload to yahoo mail account 3) Share the user id and pass with people you want to share. 4) ... 5) profit?

Re:yahoo e-mail addresses, the new DMZ?

[TheRealMindChild]

If Bugmenot taught me one thing, is there is always the asshole who changes the password as soon as they log in.

Spammers

[BrianPan]

I'll write the followup headline...

Yahoo to Offer Unlimited Email Storage, Spammers Rejoice

What, did they really think the users would be filling the extra space?

Woohoo.dumb

[Junior J. Junior III]

Nothing like childish, wild-eyed stupidity to spark another .com bubble. It was brainlessly exhuberant promises with no tangible means to deliver that caused the crash in 2000, and apparently Yahoo has learned nothing.

Well, maybe they have -- they survived the first crash, and swallowed a whole bunch of smaller companies in the process. Companies that had smart, innovative ideas but not enough capital to sustain themselves through a bleak period. Could it be that this is what Yahoo! is hoping will happen again?

Fantastic!

[CranberryKing]

Now I can procrastinate phasing off yahoo!mail even longer.

Storage doesn't matter anymore. Three features gmail has that kills yahoo!mail
1. Still force mandatory spam tags on outgoing mail.
2. Still have cap on attachment size (I want to send huge numanuma song video as attachment to the world).
3. Interface still sucks (even the beta).

Usability Up, But it is slooooooow

[geoffrobinson]

I like the interface over the old one. But I find it to be much, much slower. My guess would be that there are numerous connections going on in the background.

Re:Usability Up, But it is slooooooow

[jimjamjoh]

It's dreadfully slow to load up, yes, because it's got so much javascript overhead on the front end. But that's a feature, not a flaw, because it's designed to just sit in a browser window/tab and never refresh the page, and once the initial loading is complete, it is MUCH faster to do repetitive email tasks, because the full page never reloads, just little pieces here and there via AJAX.

So, just like a desktop app, you sacrifice a bit in start-up time to get an app that is more responsive and allows more seamless transition between its various features.

I'll stick with Gmail thank you

[Nonillion]

Sorry, but I think my current Gmail's 2833 MB of storage ought to be enough for anyone.

YahooFS may replace SlashdoFS

[goombah99]

The problem with GoogleFS was that it was a lot of work for relatively little, slow storage. Thus it's main utility -- offsite backups--was of little value. Now with unlimited E-mail storage the value of it for offsite backups is realizable. So would someone please create YahooFS so that I can mount my yahooMail-based file system on my desktop and drag my files across?

Up until now I have been using my own hand rolled SlashdotFS. It works by encoding data into comments. It uses a Markov chain sentence generator to encode data in english looking sentences then writes them as comments in slashdot. I use a redudancy system to prevent data loss if comments are deleted. The other problem is that because the system is write-only, it's means lots of bandwidth for files I change frequently. Even so it works. But the results has been that I feel kinda guilty about all the gibberish comments I insert into slashdot. The good news is that because of the english markov sentence generator, no one can actually tell that it's data so they just think it's some person they need to begin flaming immediately.

In the last version of the program I actually made the post somwhat on-topic by retraining the markov genewrator based on the word field distribution of the thread itself. Slightly slower, but then it looks like a conversation.

I'd feel a lot less guilty if I could use YahooFS instead.

Re:YahooFS may replace SlashdoFS

[goombah99]

By the way, the above post was just an encoded version of my secret egg salad recipe.

Re:YahooFS may replace SlashdoFS

[Sporkinum]

Saracen pig! Spartan dog! Take this! And this! Roman cow! Russian snake! Spanish fly!

+1 for a What's up Tiger Lily reference!

Re:YahooFS may replace SlashdoFS

[kurzweilfreak]

Congrats on your generator passing the Turing test. :)

Re:YahooFS may replace SlashdoFS

[jzeejunk]

I use a redudancy(sic) system to prevent data loss if comments are deleted.

with all the dupes i'm sure redundancy is not that much of a concern.

Re:YahooFS may replace SlashdoFS

[rez_rat]

The funny thing is... most those comments were modded "Insightful"!!!

S-

Re:YahooFS may replace SlashdoFS

[ockegheim]

My bad, that was my /.ModerationFS implementation.

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/ 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?

Re:no proof reading required?

[dasnipa]

not to mention that 2833.40496GB is greater than 2833.40454GB so according the article, gmail's space decreases over time... good job proof reading...

FUSE and Yahoo?

[FuryG3]

So, FUSE (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:

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?

What does unlimited really mean?

[suggsjc]

I haven't read the article or Yahoo!'s terms of agreements, but what does unlimited *really* mean? Not that I would want to, but just say I automated a script that went around the net and automatically send email with pseudo random pics/video's/other large media as attachments. Or I sent nightly backups of my entire filesystem (I know bandwidth becomes a limiting factor, but still).

How much "stuff" do I have to start throwing in my inbox before they raise a red flag and either ban the account or throttle my upload speed? Unlimited is a tricky word. It can actually mean different things (kinda). For instance I can say I allow unlimited refills at a restaurant, but it really means unlimited for that day. When they close and reopen the next day you'll have to buy another cup to get your "unlimited" refills.

All that to say, I'm sure that somewhere there are probably clauses that will greatly restrict their definition of "unlimited." Does anyone know what/where they are?

Rediffmail beat them to the punch

[Russ Nelson]

Gee, I'm surprised that Rediffmail's
announcement of unlimited email storage didn't make Slashdot.

Nothing to see here...

[mjeppsen]

*yawn*
Yahoo...Bringing you Yesterday's innovations Next Year.

-MJ

This Wont Work

[Velocir]

I don't think this will work. We used to have unlimited texting over here in NZ, but people were sending a 100,000 txts a month so they had to cancel the service. People have been uploading hours of video to try to fill their Gmail accounts.
People will always try to push the limits of what is possible when corporations offer them things that are supposedly unlimited...