DailyTech - Yahoo! to Offer Unlimited Email Storage

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Internet Yahoo! to Offer Unlimited Email Storage
Brandon Hill (Blog) - March 28, 2007 9:51 AM

23 comment(s) - last by ttowntom3.. on Mar 30 at 12:34 PM

Yahoo! Mail to leapfrog Gmail and Live Mail

Yahoo! is upping the ante when it comes to email storage online. The company has announced that it will begin providing Yahoo! Mail users with unlimited email storage.

The announcement of the unlimited email storage will closely follow the 10-year anniversary of Yahoo! Mail. When Yahoo! Mail launched nearly 10 years ago the original storage capacity for accounts was a mere 4MB.

"I remember getting in a room to plan our RocketMail launch over a decade ago and worrying that our original plan of a 2MB quota wasn’t enough, and that we needed to be radical and DOUBLE the storage to 4MB per account," said Yahoo! Mail's John Kremer. "It’s ironic that I routinely send and receive individual mail attachments bigger than that now. Our total capacity for mail accounts back then was 200GB for all of our customers. At Yahoo!, we’re now receiving more inbound mail than that every 10 minutes."

Over the years, Yahoo! Mail has steadily increased storage capacity for its users. Users with free accounts got a bump to 100MB in 2004 and an even larger boost to 1GB in 2005.

Yahoo! Mail is currently the world's largest provider of email accounts. Yahoo! Mail has over 250 million global users, but Microsoft is closing in fast with over 228 million Live Mail users. Gmail is a distant third with 51 million users.

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Limited unlimited service

By mattsaccount on 3/28/2007 10:07:37 AM , Rating: 5

I wonder what Yahoo's limit for "unlimited" actually is? Who wants to be the first to find out? ;-)

RE: Limited unlimited service

By JonnyBlaze on 3/28/2007 10:12:31 AM , Rating: 2

I'll give it a shot when I fill my gmail.

My gmail:

quote:
You are currently using 2172 MB (76%) of your 2833 MB.

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RE: Limited unlimited service

By Misty Dingos on 3/28/2007 10:24:45 AM , Rating: 5

You need to cut back. Really step away from the keyboard and sit in the sunshine. Drink a beverage of your choice and talk (no really talk not chat online or email) to another real live human being. You will be happier for it. There is a real world out there. And we want you to participate in it with the rest of us.

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RE: Limited unlimited service

By Hare on 3/28/2007 10:32:26 AM , Rating: 3

Maybe he is using gmail-drive and has lots of backups.

What we really need is someone creating a hack for this Yahoo service. I wouldn't mind having unlimited network storage mounted on my desktop :)

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RE: Limited unlimited service

By JonnyBlaze on 3/28/2007 2:07:31 PM , Rating: 2

It's mostly files from work. I send them home to work on them then send them back.

Theres a few videos here and there.

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RE: Limited unlimited service

By mattsaccount on 3/28/2007 10:53:11 AM , Rating: 2

I appreciate your generous, if misplaced, concern. :) My comment was a reference to the seemingly endless stream of companies that advertise a product as "unlimited" when, in fact, there are very real limits. E.g. Comcast capping bandwidth per month, Netflix throttling movies per month, etc.

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RE: Limited unlimited service

By kkwst2 on 3/28/2007 11:12:29 AM , Rating: 2

Maybe it wouldn't seem so misplaced if you realized where it was placed.

He wasn't talking to you, dude!

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RE: Limited unlimited service

By css1323 on 3/28/07, Rating: -1

RE: Limited unlimited service

By Oregonian2 on 3/28/2007 5:30:23 PM , Rating: 2

Well, but there is a catch. The amount you can store is absolutely unlimited. However, the amount you can retrieve back is limited. For storage of the difference between the two amounts, they use an updated version of the famous Signetics WOM part (I've the datasheet at home somewhere). Yahoo uses the WOHDD. A Write-only hard disk drive is used to hold that "infinite" storage beyond their retrivial amount limit (which is a much lower number).

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RE: Limited unlimited service

By ttowntom3 on 3/30/2007 12:33:16 PM , Rating: 2

That comment is really uncalled for

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Yahoo spams your emails

By dallastx on 3/28/2007 10:58:06 AM , Rating: 5

Yahoo Mail sucks. They put their own advertising spam at the bottom of all your outgoing messages.

Use Gmail. No spam + free pop.

RE: Yahoo spams your emails

By christianspoer on 3/28/07, Rating: 0

RE: Yahoo spams your emails

By jtesoro on 3/28/2007 11:57:55 AM , Rating: 5

Are you using the free version of Yahoo Mail? From what I know, POP3 access is available only if you pay $19.99/yr for Yahoo Mail Plus. Ads will also appear at the bottom of your emails unless you are using the paid version.

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RE: Yahoo spams your emails

By dallastx on 3/28/2007 12:09:51 PM , Rating: 2

If you have pop access and no spam, then you're paying them money.

With Gmail, you get all of this for FREE!

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RE: Yahoo spams your emails

By gramboh on 3/28/2007 1:15:41 PM , Rating: 3

Honestly why would anyone use Yahoo or Hotmail for real e-mail anymore?

I have a Hotmail account for signing up for spam crap like forums but I use Gmail for everything else (non-work related). The interface is superior to Yahoo/Hotmail and no stupid spam.

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RE: Yahoo spams your emails

By feelingshorter on 3/28/2007 3:11:45 PM , Rating: 2

Gmail trumps Yahoo with the fact that you can use "Gmail for your Domain."

http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/editio...

For FREE. So instead of using @gmail/@yahoo/@hotmail, you can now use your own website. For example: example@mydomain.com and it will use gmail's services.

Google's "Gmail for your Domain" is true innovation. The Premier Edition is free until April 30th, which gives you 10gigs + other services. Otherwise, you can use the Standard or Education service for free. You still get the 2 gigs as you would with a regular Gmail account, but now its @mydomain.com instead of @gmail.com

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RE: Yahoo spams your emails

By ttowntom3 on 3/30/2007 12:34:36 PM , Rating: 2

you've convinced me...

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The yahoo mail beta is almost unusable

By KayKay on 3/28/2007 10:59:56 AM , Rating: 2

You know the whole AJAX'd out Yahoo Mail interface that i guess is currently in beta still?
its so slow and clunky, i cant bear to use it... The old interface lacked as much functionality and interactivity but at least it was usable.

They need to stop worrying about storage and address other more important concerns

RE: The yahoo mail beta is almost unusable

By liquidninja13 on 3/28/2007 11:15:09 AM , Rating: 2

I dont have any problems with the Yahoo Mail Beta client, in my personal experience it works a lot better than the old one although I have noticed it is a bit slower if im on a slow connection.

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