by Jack McCarthy

Yahoo takes e-mail storage to 1GB

news
Mar 23, 20051 min

As Yahoo raises storage capacity for its free Web mail service to 1GB, the competition intensifies among internet content and service providers such as Google and Microsoft to offer more attractive services.

Yahoo announced its third increase in inbox capacity in nine months, passing Microsoft’s Hotmail and matching Google’s Gmail, IDG News Service reported.

Keeping up with user demands is important because Web mail service plays a big role in people’s overall consumption of Yahoo content and services, Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo’s vice president of communications products, told the news service.

Yahoo’s Web mail has become a very important starting point for engaging users, said Charlene Li, a Forrester Research analyst. “The big three doorways (to Yahoo) are the homepage, My Yahoo and Yahoo Mail,” she said.

David Freund, information architectures analyst with Illuminata, said services such as Web mail are becoming increasingly important as both consumers and corporations grow accustomed to using them. “They gain acceptance by the end users, and it’s the end users who often wind up deciding what gets used (in corporations),” he said.