Happy Birthday! Unlimited email storage from Yahoo!

Filed under: Business, Internet, E-mail, Web services, Yahoo!

Happy Birthday! Unlimited email storage from Yahoo!

by Chris Gilmer Mar 27th 2007

We got the scoop on some very special Yahoo news! Yahoo Mail will be celebrating its 10 year anniversary shortly, and they REALLY want to celebrate. Everyone that has a Yahoo mail account will be offered unlimited email storage starting May 2007, rolling out to all users over a couple of months.

The current version of Yahoo Mail started out in 1997 when they acquired RocketMail and offered users a mere 4MB of email storage. Hmm, what could you fit in there now? Let's just say not much by today's standards. By 2005 the email capacity reached 100MB, then on to 1GB where it sits at today.

Will this groundbreaking new move from Yahoo make a few of the main free email providers like Google and Microsoft wonder how many users will switch over? Imagine never deleting emails again, storing countless mp3's, and data backups all in your Yahoo email account.

Tags: beta, email, mail, storage, unlimited, yahoo

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Crazylink said 10:52PM on 3-27-2007

Can't say I'm that excited. I've been using Yahoo since 2003 and still have only sued 6% of the 1 gig. My Gmail only has 55 Megs used up.

alf said 11:11PM on 3-27-2007

That's a little biased to say the least.

Nice to see you forgot to mention that they only introduced 1GB because of Gmail, and that they were pushing their paid services and cutting everyone down to what? 10MB?

The "unlimited" storage is just an attempt to undercut Gmail without actually bothering to innovate.

And let's not forget that Yahoo is still more evil than even Microsoft.

Paul said 11:30PM on 3-27-2007

It is very much possible to go over 100% with Gmail. It just keeps on counting, 102%, 103%...

notnamed said 11:50PM on 3-27-2007

You're about five days early, Chris...

Chrissucks said 1:50AM on 3-28-2007

Chris ... your a yahoo fan boy. I dont like you and I hope you die soon

Brian said 3:16AM on 3-28-2007

For one, #2 alf is totally right, plus yahoo, like gmail is banking on the law of averages, once you get to that high of numbers no thing changes quickly.

Plus, let me know when you run out of space on gmail, which supports more features and I believe is better all around, which is up to close to 3 gig i believe, sorry 2.8 gig. I don't see anyone but the most ridiculous of email users running out of space on gmail. I'm only using just under a gig, and I've got a decent number of large attachments and I get at least a dozen emails a day.

I say big whoop, Yahoo is just trying to compete with Google by offering unlimited storage. So now they can just say "hey, Google has a limit (in a little sarcastic girl voice) come and use our email" does yahoo even have pop3 access? and do they cap their uploads?

spencer.r said 3:41AM on 3-28-2007

This reminds me of those "UNLIMITED!" webservers out there for $3 a month. "Unlimited!" my left foot. Lets see a gmail-drive like application for yahoo and see where the limit is.

Chris Gilmer said 8:29AM on 3-28-2007

Chrissucks - I would actually consider myself a Google fan since i do write the Googleholic twice per week.

Its great to see some email wars heating up again between the big players.

chris said 8:46AM on 3-28-2007

A little competition never hurt anyone, right?

Jonathan Harford said 9:03AM on 3-28-2007

I'm with spencer.r -- were it truly UNLIMITED people would start trying to backup their porn collections to their email accounts. I wonder how they'll keep that from happening?

Also -- I'll definitely stay with Gmail, simply because Gmail's "the user owns the data" policy is much better than Yahoo's "let's lock the user in".

Michael said 9:35AM on 3-28-2007

I really do not like this blogger at all

Dan Warne said 9:51AM on 3-28-2007

While I definitely congratulate Yahoo on leading the charge here, I'll personally be sticking with my $US50 Google Apps Premium 10GB mailbox -- I'd rather pay a little bit than have to put up with the really intrusive ads Yahoo sticks in the mail interface.

Plus, I've come to rather like Gmail's conversation mode -- it gets the torrent of emails I receive into a bit more order. It took me a LONG time to come to like it ... initially I hated it, and wished Google would institute a toggle between chronological and conversation views, but now I wouldn't give it away.

Jay said 10:36AM on 3-28-2007

It's about time. It only makes sense. Yahoo, after all, gives you unlimited storage for Photos. Why not for Mail?

Still waiting on that upgrade to Briefcase, though.

tpp said 10:41AM on 3-28-2007

Oh my God, did the Google fanboys just come out in force this morning.

Geez, regardless of Yahoo's motivation or whether you are going to use all the petabytes of storage or Yahoo Mail at all this is a good thing, because it might force Google (and others) to do the same thing.

Chris A said 11:05AM on 3-28-2007

Wow I will never have to delete my spam again :) I can just let it pile up until eternity. I write a web site for antique spam.

Jack said 11:22AM on 3-28-2007

Let's see what happens on 'Gmail Day' - April 1st!

Brian Farney said 1:12PM on 3-28-2007

And with Gmail you really don't get adds, I mean seriously can you even call google adds even adds? If you complain about them you need a life, its only text. Thats what I love about Google, no retarded-ly huge adds that flash and go bang and make people who like shiny things click on them.

Machine said 1:43PM on 3-28-2007

It's actually kind of easy to fill up a Google account if you're a photographer and you're mailing large files to models for approval. I'm at 88% full up at this point and have had to go and prune my attachments several times over the last year.

If I can really go over 100% or if Gmail goes unlimited it's going to save me a lot of free time!

roybenyoseph said 1:53PM on 3-28-2007

Upfront disclaimer — I work for AOL and lead the Mail Product Management & Business teams.

With all the talk about Yahoo and Gmail, I thought I'd jump in and note that AOL has offered unlimited email storage to its users since 2005. AOL is free to everyone via AOL.com.

hibiscusroto said 3:40PM on 3-28-2007

Great! Now ALL of my email can be accessed by the Chinese government!

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