Yahoo e-mail storage quadruples
By Jonathan Thaw Yahoo Inc., the No. 2 U.S. Internet search engine, will quadruple the storage capacity of its free e-mail service and improve screening for computer viruses to support its position as the most popular Web e-mail service.
Users will be able to store 1 gigabyte of e-mail messages starting in late April, an increase from 250 megabytes Wednesday, Sunnyvale-based Yahoo said. One gigabyte, which equals 1,024 megabytes, is roughly equivalent to the content in 32 feet of shelves filled with books.
Yahoo is matching the e-mail storage offered by Google Inc., the most-used search engine, and topping the 250 megabytes offered by Microsoft Corp.'s MSN. Expanded e-mail storage lets users more easily exchange messages with attachments, such as photos, and search through archives of messages.
"They're removing storage as one of the deciding factors" when people chose an e-mail service, said Charlene Li, an analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research Inc.
Google's e-mail service, released on a test basis in April 2004, is available to a limited number of users. The company is opening up the service by offering users more invitations that invite others to open an account and offering random visitors to its Web site the opportunity to open an account. Yahoo is "getting ready for Google's general release," Li said.
Yahoo's e-mail service is the Web's most popular, attracting 60 million visitors in February, a 14 percent rise from a year earlier, according to Virginia-based ComScore Networks, which tracks Web use. Time Warner Inc.'s America Online was No. 2 in e-mail with 46.9 million visitors, and MSN was third with 41.9 million. Google was seventh with 2.62 million visitors. "Mail is among the most important properties at Yahoo," Brad Garlinghouse, vice president for Yahoo communications products, said in a telephone interview.
not i, obviously.