Unlimited!
Yahoo! Mail just started providing unlimited storage space for free to all of its users making good on their promise. Yahoo! seems to have invested quite a lot to Mail! (contrary to Microsoft which more or less hung Hotmail out to dry) and offers an amazing alternative to Google’s Mail. If you haven’t used the new Yahoo! Mail yet, now you have another reason to do so.
[Update: Microsoft just announced its new Windows Live Hotmail with 2GB of storage and a new AJAX interface. Sadly for them, it sucks.]
Hello,
I’m not surprised at all from these news. Yahoo! is on the verge of merging with Microsoft (according to the latest news) and it is urging to increase its end price by making offensive moves. Unlimited space is useless on the vast majority of users, not to mention the widely used web host policy of overselling.
I would prefer from Yahoo! to invest on the core and the usuability of their mail service. In detail, Yahoo! mail has very slow response, is unstable and full of annoying ads. Moreover, it doesn’t make any improvements on the semantic part of the search algorithms. Google Mail on the other hand, provides a very sleek and robust application which is made from users and addresses user’s needs.
To be honest I don’t use free email as my primary mail solution. (I own my domain) On the other hand, Google mail is great for archiving and quick retrieval of data that someone wants to have available anywhere, thus making an great alternative for USB Flash disks.
Do you still advocate for Yahoo! mail ? :-)
No it isn’t. That was just a rumour that became widespread in early May. Do you have any references to the ‘latest news’ that back up your assertion? Yet, even if it were going to merge with Microsoft, why and how exactly does this reduce the value of the improvements it’s performed on its services?
Actually I disagree. Unlimited space is very useful to a lot of people that use their web mail as their main email account. I know several people that use GMail almost exclusively and are constantly very near the 2.8GB limit.
Funny you should say that. I find (the new AJAX based) Yahoo! Mail much faster than the old one and on par with (if not faster than) GMail. Regarding advertising, Google also has ads. In any case, I haven’t seen any for years…
Finally I do not accept your argument wrt using GMail as an online storage service. Your comparison with USB, especially in a bandwidth-starved country like Hellas is, to put it mildly, slightly off the mark. This is not an argument against Y! Mail. A contrario, this argument could be used in favour of its unlimited storage too.
I’ve been using online email services continuously since 1995. GMail was the first one I used more or less as a primary service, but I like the new Yahoo! Mail much better than GMail (I never liked GMail’s Web UI anyway; I use a POP client). So, to answer your question: Sure, Yahoo! Mail is worth it in my opinion. If Microsoft decides to buy it and screw it like it did with Hotmail, well that’s another matter completely, but — right now — it rocks.
Thanks for the comment.
Dear Cosmix,
Thank you for your prompt reply to my comment.
Regarding the unlimited space policy, I would prefer to be a little more suspicious for this. Simple maths show that this feature is practically a buzzword in order to grab the attention of the media. Most of the major web hosts currently offer dead cheap 100GB plans on the premise that only few will ever use them. Believe me, it works. Hence, to answer your first comment, Yahoo! has been dethroned at the search engine market and the same is about to happen on the free web mail service, as Google Mail’s user share increases rapidly. So is there a real improvement here or just another marketing trick?
In addition, I don’t disagree on the usefulness of ample on-line space. On the other hand, practice shows that very few actually use it (including your friends and mine too which are computer geeks).
Extra functions, better spam filters and semantic search capabilities are what users want rather than “unlimited” space.
Google ads are not that annoying at all. Most of the users do not have ad blockers like the one you suggested. Regarding response, it seems that our opinions are biased. It should be better to seek for a benchmark which will provide an objective answer…
I totally disagree on that point but I can explain your opinion since you use Google Mail from your e-mail client. The search and archiving abilities of the Google Mail are exceptional. I frequently send e-mails to myself with documents attached in order to have them available anywhere, anytime. Of course this service can’t justify the replacement of our beloved USB flash disks, as it is proven to be inconvenient due to the poor network infrastructure in Hellas.
When I have the choice, I avoid Microsoft products in favor of their Open Source equivalents. Contrary to that, I have to admit that Microsoft doesn’t “screw” software it incorporates. Great examples are Visio and MS SQL Server (formerly SyBase).
Have a nice Saturday night and thanks again for your reply.
I am not sure I understand what you mean Vaggeli. Yahoo! Mail 2.0 is an immediately obvious and welcome improvement over the old Yahoo! Mail, and it’s still in β. Mind you, GMail had its fair share of bugs and problems and incompatibilities when it first came out in 2004 and it arguably had a fair amount of criticism regarding its performance, stability and usability. My point here is exactly what you demonstrate to me: that people are so biased against/in favour of companies they refuse to see what’s on offer.
Yahoo has invested lots of money and has produced really good services and tools as of late. Examples are Yahoo! Maps, Yahoo! Pipes, Yahoo Answers! (now most probably the largest knowledge-base after Google decided to pull the plug on its own) and Yahoo! Mail.
I don’t dispute that it has been dethroned and I was never a huge fan of Yahoo! anyway, but it strikes me as perhaps a bit biased to ignore all that it’s got to offer just because you have some grudge against Microsoft and expect Y! to be bought or because you don’t like the brand. Yahoo! Mail is good, that’s all I claimed and I stick to my claim. You may not like it; that’s fine.
Overselling is a age-old principle. The telephone system works like that, the internet backbones work like that. Everything that depends on scarce, limited resources and variable usage patterns depends like that. There’s nothing wrong with this. It allows people that need the space/performance/whatever use it while allowing those that don’t need it to enjoy a good service anyway.
Actually, whether I use or don’t use a POP client is somewhat irrelevant. GMail keeps a copy anyway, even if you use a POP client. I don’t find GMail’s search ‘exceptional’ in any way. It’s good, in the same way Y! Mail’s search is good or Thunderbird’s or Apple Mail’s search is good.
Finally, I don’t like sending stuff to myself via email. I can carry a USB flash drive if I need something. In addition. Why depend on Google for your data when you can carry it with you? If I want to put something online I use my hosting provider. :)
1. Well, I don’t use any Microsoft products right now and haven’t used any for several years.
2. GMail is not open-source. It has nothing to do with open-source. Let’s stick to the point.
3. I wrote that Microsoft ’screwed’ Hotmail. Nothing less, nothing more. The examples you mentioned are indeed products that have benefited from Microsoft’s scale, but there are countless others that haven’t. Let’s not go into this here though; it’d be out of topic and I’m getting too old and too tired of such debates :)
If we refer to your blog post we may witness some sort of over-enthusiastic behavior which indicates your bias in favor of Yahoo! Mail and justifies (up to a point) my (constructive I hope) criticism.
I agree on the quality of services provided by Yahoo! (especially Yahoo pipes - a major breakthrough in modern web in my humble opinion). I am not against Yahoo! or perhaps Yahoo!-Microsoft. I care only about good products and real improvements not just buzzwords, derived from marketing departments (even Google Mail’s policy does the same regarding the available space).
Moreover, as I previously stressed, overselling is not always a bad thing. No further comments are necessary on that.
Congratulations on your independence from Microsoft products. I wish I could say that for myself too.
I would like though to make clear that I am not a Google Mail advocate as it may have been implied from my writings.
As for the age we may be “too old to rock ‘n roll but too young to die”.
Good night
Hehe. Well, Vaggeli, I’m not overly enthousiastic about Y! Mail. I’m happy that Yahoo! Mail, still the largest web-based email service, is not sitting idle when faced with competition, but takes the initiative and one-ups Google in this respect. Remember when Google introduced the 1GB email and everyone followed suit? Well, it’s the same thing. And trust me, there are lots of people that practically live in their GMail and are going to really appreciate it if/when Google removes the limits on storage. That’s what I’m most enthousiastic about. Competition :)
Regarding my independence from Microsoft: I was using UNIX boxes predominantly well before I got rid of Windows completely, but the turning point was when I adopted OS X as my primary desktop OS. And what a joy that was, despite the fact that, back then, it was very, very, very rough on the edges (but still infinitely better than linux).
Today, things are much easier for anyone wishing to get rid of Microsoft from their life (although my keyboard and mouse still sport the ‘dreaded’ logo :) ). Apple’s machines are quite cheap (arguably cheaper than other major PC brands), there’s an abundance of really high quality software for OS X and — last but not least — linux on the desktop, albeit not exactly what I’d call ‘excellent’ (it still has at least 3-4 years before it’s truly competitive in my opinion), is much improved and quite suitable for everyday use, in the case you really dislike Apple.