Yahoo Mail Does Infinity In Practice, Not Just In Theory
Two years ago this Sunday, Google introduced two gigabytes of email storage for Gmail, with the amount of storage ticking up slowly, what they called their “Infinity + 1″ system. The idea was that since the counter went up continuously, you really had near-infinite storage. It was a great idea, except for one thing: Infinity + 1 implies better than inifinity, but it’s not.
See, Yahoo has announced that, as of this May, Yahoo Mail with have infinite storage. Actual infinite storage. As long as you don’t try to use your inbox as a hard drive, Yahoo will let it grow and grow, forever. Gmail’s 2834 gigabytes look paltry by comparison. I’ve updated Google’s April 1, 2005 graphic, with the reality, not the theory, of email storage as it is now:
So, April 1 is this Sunday, and while Google did nothing for Gmail last year on that date, there is a mini-tradition of Gmail annoucements coming on April 1. Can Google top infinity? Not really, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they had planned that, and Yahoo just stole their thunder. Perhaps by providing infinite storage, not just infinite email storage, Gmail can announce something bigger. As it looks now, Yahoo is sitting pretty atop the email storage mountain.
Storage is irrelevant to me, for now. To the best of my knowledge, I’m still using less than one megabyte of my Gmail storage.
I still hold a grudge against Hotmail for stealing eight of my precious megabytes - I’m still convinced I once had a 10 megabyte inbox, that suddenly became a 2 megabyte one.
And as for Yahoo: what good does it do when you cannot even access your e-mail, and when the help system somehow thinks “POP3″ and “Thunderbird” mean “Yahoo ID”?
Oh, please. Not having POP3 is so very Microsoft.
At least improve upon Gmail - say, offer an option that lets people download their spambox. Their entire search history.
Google aims to free its users, if I understand Matt Cutts correctly. Well, Google didn’t succeed at that - yet. So, what are you waiting for, Yahoo?
Comment by Tim | March 30, 2007
I just wanted to say WOW!!
Comment by bing | August 15, 2007