IMO, if you need a gig of email storage you're being a bit ridiculous

Yahoo bolsters free e-mail to counter Google's Gmail
- MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer
Monday, June 14, 2004

(06-14) 21:08 PDT SAN FRANCISCO (AP) --

Internet giant Yahoo! Inc. is fortifying its free e-mail service with 25 times more storage and freeing up millions of previously claimed e-mail addresses in an effort to thwart a looming threat from its increasingly disruptive rival Google Inc.

Beginning Tuesday, all of Yahoo's free e-mail accounts will be upgraded to 100 megabytes, a move spurred by Google's plans to offer 1,000 megabytes of free storage through its Gmail service, which has remained in a test phase since early April.

Yahoo has been offering 4 megabytes of free e-mail storage, although some people with accounts opened several years ago have 6 megabytes of free storage.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo disclosed that it would be increasing its free storage to 100 megabytes during an analyst meeting held last month, but hadn't provided a specific time for the upgrade until now.

The company hopes to appeal to e-mailers in other ways, too.

Angling for new users, Yahoo has decided to let people begin signing up for addresses that have been inactive for years. The offer is designed to lure Web surfers who may have been previously interested in signing up for a free Yahoo e-mail account only to learn one of their preferred handles had already been claimed.

"Some of these addresses could be very juicy and might attract a lot of interest," said David Ferris, an e-mail analyst in San Francisco.

Posted by Prometheus 6 on June 15, 2004 - 8:03am :: Seen online
 
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i noticed that this morning, and wondered if that was their way of holding onto a lot of their users.

and for reference, i do have well over 1Gb of email, but it's the total for stuff going back at least 10-12 years, from various friends, mailing lists and whatnot. my active bit is significantly smaller.

Posted by  DesertJo (not verified) on June 15, 2004 - 6:14pm.

I guess I'm just rude, because I don't keepp anything I haven't looked at for a month. I think if I really wanted a gig of live storage I'd write an email client that uses a database for its back end.

But, yeah, it's a reaction to Gmail. And I think it's futile. Google got buzz, and people are selling Gmail invitations. Even more bizarre, to me anyway, is that people are buying them.

Posted by  P6 (not verified) on June 15, 2004 - 7:48pm.