Yahoo offers 100MB of email space

NEWS Yahoo on Tuesday will begin offering 100MB of extra storage for users of its free email service as part of an overall redesign of its mail service.

Along with the 100MB boost, Yahoo will upgrade Mail Plus paid users to 2GB of storage and lower its yearly subscription from $29.99 (£16.50) a year to $19.99. Other a la carte services, such as POP email forwarding, will consolidate under this plan and no longer be sold on a standalone basis.

The storage boost comes as no surprise. Yahoo arch-rival Google in April announced plans to launch a free email service called "Gmail" with 1GB of storage. The upcoming launch of Gmail has changed the landscape for free-email users, but also raised privacy concerns because of Google's decision to serve advertisements based on scanning the content of email text. Yahoo executives last month announced the company would offer its own storage upgrade as part of overall changes to the service.

Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo's vice president of communications products, said the changes were enacted to make "email storage a non-issue." He acknowledged that competitive forces were a factor as well.

"There are new competitors on the scene, and we want to make sure the things we're focused on are important with users," Garlinghouse said.

The new storage limits amount to a strategic turnaround for Yahoo. In 2002, the company began charging for various tiers of storage sise for its photos and briefcase products. Yahoo also lowered its free email memory from 6MB to 4MB for new members.

Aside from being able to keep more emails, most changes to the new Yahoo Mail are cosmetic, with emphasis on making the service sleeker and faster. The product will give greater emphasis to a mail search bar at the top of the page. Unlike Google, the Yahoo search bar will not search email text to serve advertisements, but will allow people to more easily hunt for buried correspondence.

Garlinghouse also said the company will free 50 million identities into circulation. That means identities that have remained dormant will become available again for general use. While Yahoo has maintained a policy of recycling user identities after six months of dormancy, the company has taken a "very conservative approach" to offering these names back to users, Garlinghouse said.

Talkback

100Mb storage is all very well, but the User Interface is broken in both IE and Mozilla.

The Help pages linked to in the service announcement do not exist.

At the moment, Yahoo Mail is unusable.

Have they heard of testing?

15 Jun 04 10:05 Reply

I'm likewise not able to get into my main Yahoo Mail account, so the 100 Mb sounds nice, but this is already teaching me not to put too much faith in a free service, particularly one with such a poor record of resolving problems. I wouldn't want 100 Mb of messages I need access to completely inaccessible to me.

Apparently, there is something about my main Yahoo account that doesn't like the upgrade. I can access Yahoo Mail with a backup account. I then log off that account, log into my main account and all I get is a blank screen. I can go to Yahoo Groups and edit my main account, but I cannot get into email. The fact that I can get into and out of a Yahoo Mail account without a problem, but have trouble with a different account, indicates that the trouble is out of my control.

16 Jun 04 22:24 Reply

This is the best email server. Well Done YAHOO!

17 Jun 04 05:56 Reply

I have never understood why people use web mails.Yahoo is so slow when deleting or moving thru mail.
I still use outlook express with all its vulnerabilities because it is fast and intuitive. I've tried eudora and others but have locked myself into outlook express bcause I bought a program which allows me to store my messages external to outlook and a number of format eg word or pdf and I am to too tight to not use it.

I really would like to know what the attraction is

18 Jun 04 07:44 Reply

I have been unable to access my Yahoo email account since Saturday, 6/19/03. I log-in and then after a long wait the screen says that the page cannot be found. Yahoo said disturbances in email service may occur but that they would be temporary. Has anyone been blocked from their email for such an extended time and if so were you able to notify Yahoo?

Thanks.

21 Jun 04 14:28 Reply

What's UP Yahoo? I'm STILL at 4MB!! :(

2 Jul 04 06:32 Reply

I still have only 4MB space

3 Jul 04 07:24 Reply

i open a new account and i get only 6MB space how do i get the 100MB???

17 Jul 04 12:18 Reply

I'm still on 6MB and haven't received any upgrade notifications :(

19 Jul 04 10:27 Reply

I figured out the fix to convert your account from 4MB / 6MB to 100MB:

A friend of mine was having the same problem, a 6MB account, while I had a 100MB account. So I compared the differences and figured it out...

1. Login to your Yahoo! Mail account
2. If you see only 6MB, go to Mail Options
3. Select Account Information from the left of the screen
4. You'll be asked for your password again. Enter it.
5. You will see the Membership Information page
6. Copy the url of this page into notepad
7. Compare your url with this url:

http://edit.yahoo.com/config/set_intl?.child=&.scrumb=***********&.done=http%3a//edit.yahoo.com/config/eval_profile%3f.src=%26.intl=us%26.done=http%3a//us.f607.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Options%3fYY=87095%26.scrumb=***********

8. Copy your scrumb code (this should be the last 11 characters of your url) from your url and place it in the two places of my url where the *********** is. Copy this url (which has your scrumb code) back into your browser.

9. Change your settings to English - US

10. Accept the New User Agreement

11. You will be logged out

12. Go to mail.yahoo.com and relogin

13, You will now see a 100MB mailbox

14. Enjoy

8 Aug 04 12:31 Reply

Thanks for your information how to upgrade.

But I am not able to get the upgradation, and still in 6 MB. Can you please help me inother way how to upgrade my account.

Thanks Kamal

mail id: kamalkreddy@yahoo.co.in

31 Aug 04 13:20 Reply

www.myway.com is better they offer 125 MB of email space

9 Sep 04 05:10 Reply

i dont know why everyone is saying that yahoo only offers 100mb email 4 free,as of a couple of months ago yahoo stated offering 250mb of email for free.soo how does that make myway better coz they only give you 125mb of email.i have both yahoo and my way accounts,and personnally i use yahoo more because my account is ssoooo much bigger.the only thing that makes my way a better email account is that their spam filters are alot better than yahoo's.hint hint myway,give alot more email space like yahoo combined with the great filters that u already have and i would only have a my way email account not both .and im sure their are many others just like me that would do the same thing.just think my way 1 day u may have the most email subscribers than any other including aol.thanks 4 listening. jeff ,indiana

8 Jan 05 00:50 Reply

i have been unable to get to my mail directly since saturday , whats going on?

18 Oct 05 15:08 Reply

All this week....my Yahoo. email has really been slow to reply/forward/open other emails and have had to "refresh" over and over and over !!!!! Can't get a good answer from the Yahoo contact pages....
Why is this happening??? I have 100 MB

16 Nov 05 14:48 Reply

i havent been able to get into my yahoo main account either for about a week now and its really really bugging me as i have important info on it.Someone tell me whats going on!!!!!!

21 Jan 06 23:05 Reply

love for all hatred for none

22 Apr 06 15:49 Reply