Yahoo offers unlimited mail storage, premium still has to pay for 2GB.

Wa-chi-Pow! From Yahoo:

Yahoo has announced that all Yahoo Mail subscribers (not just those users of the new beta products) will receive free unlimited email storage starting May 2007 from the existing 1GB per account ($20 a year premium costs for 2GB a year). With this change, Yahoo will overpower Gmail (2.8 GB coded to stop at 3.5GB) and Live.com Mail (2GB) which is owned by Microsoft.

According to statistics, Yahoo has currently 250 million global subscribers to it's mailing system as contrasted to Live.com Mail with 228 million and Gmail which has 51 million users. However according to the Yahoo abuse policies, it forbids users to 'abuse the system'. One example includes how it requires users to follow "normal email practices" instead of using Yahoo mail for online storage, (unlike what we use Gmail accounts for right now). Those who disobey these rules will have their accounts immediately suspended as users will still have access to the data (note how it's not a termination).

Users who have paid a whooping $20 to upgrade to a premium account to get 2 GB of storage will also be able to get a refund.

Interesting historical information thanks to TechCrunch: Yahoo mail will be ten years old soon. When it launched in 1997 it included a whopping 4 MB of total storage. This was increased to 100 MB in 2004, and 1 GB in 2005.

However at the end of the day (or end of May for that matter), will Yahoo Mail now be the best email product out there? Not in my opinion. Even if it gives users unlimited storage capabilities. It still lacks important features which it gives only premium users. It also doesn't support IMAP and POP access and forwarding emails are premium features, whilst Gmail offers these products for free. Gmail also offers the labeling and filtering process which neither Yahoo Mail and Live.com mail provides, which is a feature I am personally heavily dependent on.

Also, if people get this unlimited storage, what are they going to do with it? Sure it sounds nice. But if your sending huge files over the internet, it's going to take ages to upload and download. And if your using it just for emails, then your never going to manage to fill even 2GB of storage let alone unlimited.

So if your at Gmail or Live.com Mail and is satisfied with their service, think carefully before changing. Is it really worth it?
JT says no.