Yahoo users get unlimited e-mail storage

SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo announced Tuesday it was giving users of its web-based e-mail service unlimited storage capacity as a tribute to Yahoo Mail's 10th birthday and today's data-rich Internet lifestyle.

In a phased roll-out beginning in May, Yahoo will eliminate the one-gigabyte cap on memory for people with free e-mail accounts and two-gigabyte cap of memory for those who pay for premium accounts.

"We are viewing this as a gift to our users worldwide in recognition of what they have done for us and in recognition of what they are doing now on the Internet," Yahoo Mail vice president John Kremer told AFP.

"We see people increasingly sending more photos -- richer media formats in all different types -- really driving the amount of storage up beyond the levels they were a year ago."

Internet search titan Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, California, bought web-based e-mail service Rocketmail and it had four megabytes of storage when it was relaunched as Yahoo Mail in October of 1997.

Four megabytes of memory would likely not be sufficient to hold a set of pictures taken during the course of a festive weekend by someone with a typical digital camera.

Apple introduced last year an 80-gigabyte iPod capable of storing as much as 100 hours of video.

"I remember getting in a room to plan our Rocketmail launch over a decade ago and worrying that our original plan of a two MB quota wasn't enough, and that we needed to be radical and double the storage to four MB per account," said lead Rocketmail developer David Nakayama, who now works at Yahoo.

"It's ironic that I routinely send and receive individual mail attachments bigger than that now."

Yahoo Mail is the most popular web-based e-mail service and had more than 250 million users as of January, according to industry-tracking comScore Media Metrix.

The elimination of the storage cap comes at a time when costs of computer storage are declining and in the face of a relentless trend for people to exchange video, music and other data-laden digital files online.

"We think people want to continue to be able to share their lives with friends, families, and communities," Kremer said.

"They want to be able to send and store as much of their photos and attachments as possible and not manage the storage. The right step is to take the worry out of it and give them unlimited storage."

Yahoo said its "e-mail server farms" around the globe were equipped to handle the storage load and the company will invest in improved capacity where necessary.

"Yahoo Mail is so important to Yahoo as a company that we are willing to make that investment," Kremer said. "It is important to show we are listening to our customers' needs."

The limitless storage is not meant to be used by people to back-up computer software by copying system contents onto Yahoo servers.

"It was intended for normal e-mail practices," Kremer said. "Our engineers built the technologies to understand what types of files are being sent and where."

Agence France-Presse