Yahoo Says No Reason For Email Storage Games: Offers Unlimited Storage
from the storage-is-cheap dept
It's been almost exactly three years since Google first announced Gmail. The massive one gig of storage surprised the world so much that many assumed it was simply a practical joke by Google. However, Google insisted that they recognized how storage was getting cheaper and cheaper, and that it simply didn't make sense to limit how much mail you could keep (in fact, for a while, it was quite difficult to delete any mail from Gmail). Of course, while 1 gig seemed nearly infinite three years ago, it wasn't long before some people noticed it still wasn't enough. So Google started a running tally increasing their amount of storage every second to try to stay ahead of the curve. The folks over at Yahoo finally realized this was silly and have decided to just ditch the limits entirely, offering unlimited email usage for everyone. Storage is cheap. Getting and keeping users are expensive. If you can use unlimited storage to get and keep users, it's probably worth it.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Its another story that both these services suck big time. Worst offender is indiatimes.com, which keeps spamming their own users.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
really
if some one wanted to email me an encyclopedia a few times, or just be a jackass, and auto email random characters to me, I'm sure some red flag would go up at yahoo, and i'd get a complaint from them because there is no such thing as unlimited.
'gasp'
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Unlimited is just Perspective
I'm glad that yahoo has dropped the name game, but that's all it really is...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I have managed to fill almost half of my Gmail acc
Does Yahoo! really have unlimited storage? I highly doubt it. Will I ever use Yahoo! because it says it has unlimited storage? Nope. I do have a Yahoo! account, mostly because I wanted to use Flickr, but because they tag their outgoing e-mail with ads, I steer clear away from using their e-mail service.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Attachements
The mail account may still reject emails over 10mb in size.
They may also place a limit on the upload capacity.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I'll take ease of use over some storage that I'll never use up any day.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Yeah, okay. Unlimited backups?
Maybe email archives aren't important enough to back up... But then why are they such a 'selling' point for gmail?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Yahoo Sucks
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
unlimited...
all it would take is for someone to devise a GUI that turns yahoo mail into a FTP system, and then everyone who wants it has "unlimited storage"
I highly doubt that your account would be kept for long if you were transferring 25GB plus a month
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
getlost@aol.com
If I were to ever get said add-on, I know I could fill it up constantly and re-empty it just to transfer my files around.
Maybe I should look that up, thats a good idea ...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Google offers what consumers want
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Corporate Systems
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Corporate Systems
The rediculous state of affairs in most business email systems is an indication that your email solution provider is holding you back, not enabling you.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Corporate Systems
Most businesses host their e-mail internally rather than rely on providers. Also, most business do not have the resources that Yahoo! or Gmail has to be able to offer unlimited e-mail.
As a Sys Admin, you really have no idea what your talking about in terms of cost alone.
As far as Yahoo!, they DO have the money and resources to offer such a service. It doesn't really matter though, I use Yahoo! and Gmail and while Yahoo! might have ads, their spam feature actually works when you tell it something is spam! I've been getting the same spam mail from the same person for years with Gmail, even though I told it to mark as spam. Gmail's interface is WAY nicer than Yahoo! though and I love the module for your Personalized Homepage so I can see my e-mail.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Corporate Systems
It is mostly a funding thing, most corporate systems are using MS Exchange, which is pretty good on features, but not so cheap when it comes to storage requirements (2007 is a bit better). There are alternatives, but they often don't satisfy all of the end user requirements because most are so used to using Outlook, the requirements become, it has to work just like Outlook! Often the alternative is a secondary system on lower end storage for e-mail archiving, which is OK for most, but still don't exactly come cheap.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Making such a program could be as simple as adding a file browser and ASCII buffering code tot Thunderbird. If Yahoo! mail uses 8-bit text or Unicode then the ASCII buffer would not be needed either. THe only tricky part would be allowing folders ont he Yahoo! mail end, but the obvious way to do that would be to have a directory path in the subject line, which a GUI displays as a tree.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
When
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
May...
And considering that I only use Google when I really, really have to, I won't be getting a Gmail account to add to the 10 others that I have out there. Yes, I collect email addresses like baseball cards, but some of them are Spam dumpsters and others are to allow me to say crap & still be able to get a job down the road.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Regarding Storage
[ link to this | view in chronology ]