Yahoo has beefed up its free e-mail service with 25 times more storage following its rival Google’s plans to offer 1,000 megabytes (1 GB) of free storage through its Gmail service.
Yahoo has also freed up millions of previously claimed e-mail addresses. All of Yahoo’s free e-mail accounts will be upgraded to 100 megabytes from Tuesday, a move spurred by Google’s Gmail service, which has remained in a test phase since early April.
Yahoo has been offering 4 megabytes of free e-mail storage, although some people with accounts opened several years ago have 6 megabytes of free storage. Aiming for new users and to cleanse out their inactive ones, Yahoo has decided to let people begin signing up for addresses that have been unused for years.
Yahoo says it will improve the tools used to search its e-mails, integrating Yahoo Search Technology into its email functions. “The objective here is to make storage quotas irrelevant to users,†said Senior Vice President Jim Brock. Brock also added that Yahoo Mail will tie in more Yahoo-branded services, such as Photos and Messenger.
Yahoo Mail has recently felt pressure to offer more user friendly functions and email storage space ever since Google unleashed their pans for GMail with 1GB of free store in exchange for the user allowing Google to serve AdWords advertisements which are targeted to each email’s content. Google has come under privacy group fire for the GMail advertising structure, but for the most part, users feel that GMail’s functionality and storage space make up for having to view the advertisements.
