Yahoo promises unlimited e-mail storage

When Yahoo began offering free e-mail 10 years ago, the capacity of the entire service topped out at 200 gigabytes. It takes about 10 minutes for Yahoo's incoming e-mail to devour 200 gigabytes of storage today, Kremer wrote.

Sunnyvale-based Yahoo said its offer of infinite storage is meant to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its e-mail service. But the decision also comes a month after Google posed a more serious threat to Yahoo by dropping the final remnants of Gmail's invitation-only restrictions and opening up the service to all comers.

In February, Yahoo's e-mail attracted 243 million visitors with Microsoft in second with 233 million visitors, according to market research firm comScore Media Metrix. Gmail ranked third with 62 million visitors, a 68 percent increase from the previous year, followed by AOL at 50 million, comScore said.

Yahoo's expansion will be largely irrelevant to many e-mail users who haven't come close to approaching their current limit.

That's one reason why Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft has no immediate plans to match Yahoo's offer.

"Storage has not been a major issue or pain point for customers for years now," Microsoft said Wednesday in a statement.

Mountain View-based Google has been adding about 145 megabytes of free storage to each e-mail account annually _ a pace that would raise storage limits to about 3.27 gigabytes in three years. The company has no current plans to change that formula, Google spokeswoman Courtney Hohne said Wednesday.

In an interview last month, Google co-founder Sergey Brin indicated the company would probably begin charging a small fee for people who want even more e-mail storage.

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