Yahoo! anymore?

[aznprodigy]

Since Hotmail is going to upgrade to a nice 250MB, do you think Yahoo! will counter that with perhaps 300MB? After Hotmail upgrades its services, Yahoo! will probably be on the bottom of the line. Have there been any news on this? Hotmail's extra 150MB will surely attract more users...

[IsaacH]

Originally posted by aznprodigy
Hotmail's extra 150MB will surely attract more users...

Especially if Hotmail continues to allow free users to access their mail through Outlook Express (which they do, even though they bill it as a premium feature).

[gdg]

If anyone is going to be looking at the storage for free that closely, they'll probably end up with Gmail rather than the other two, once it's out officially.

Yahoo's and Hotmail's efforts on that front are probably only going to keep the current users after that point.

[guillaume]

I would not compare Hotmail to Yahoo right now cause for me Yahoo still appears much stronger and as a real established Web PIM...Hotmail still is really slow compared to Yahoo...People just don't ignore this
As for Gmail, it is way too poor in feature IMO, asli I hate the GUI...well do they have a GUI BTW?...If I want an ugly interface I'd rather use a Mail CLient...

[FMRocks]

Originally posted by aznprodigy
Hotmail's extra 150MB will surely attract more users...

I don't think so. For two reasons.

(1) See gdgrph's post. Once in the 100MB and up world, storage is insignificant in terms of making decisions.

(2) Hotmail 250MB has NO real advantage in terms of space over Yahoo 100MB. Consider that today, spam accounts for well over half of all email (I am not referring to anyone's mailbox in particular). Hotmail's Junk folder counts towards your message quota. Yahoo's Bulk folder does not. So to make the math easy, let's assume that 50% of the email is junk. Hence, hotmail's real storage is reduced to 125MB - at most. Yahoo's is still 100MB. Minor difference, and hotmail spam is likely more than a mere 50%, wiping out even that differerence.

[LrdVader]

It will be interesting to see whether Hotmail changes some of its other user-unfriendly policies, such as deleting mail at random from accounts that are over-quota, and deleting messages from the Sent folder after 30 days. Yes, I realize very few accounts will *go* over quota with 250mb quotas, but no serious email service has any business even having such a policy.

[gdg]

Originally posted by FMRocks
I don't think so. For two reasons.

(1) See gdgrph's post. Once in the 100MB and up world, storage is insignificant in terms of making decisions.

(2) Hotmail 250MB has NO real advantage in terms of space over Yahoo 100MB. Consider that today, spam accounts for well over half of all email (I am not referring to anyone's mailbox in particular). Hotmail's Junk folder counts towards your message quota. Yahoo's Bulk folder does not. So to make the math easy, let's assume that 50% of the email is junk. Hence, hotmail's real storage is reduced to 125MB - at most. Yahoo's is still 100MB. Minor difference, and hotmail spam is likely more than a mere 50%, wiping out even that differerence.

Plus, you can save attachments to your 30mb Yahoo Briefcase, if you wish.

[gdg]

Originally posted by LrdVader
It will be interesting to see whether Hotmail changes some of its other user-unfriendly policies, such as deleting mail at random from accounts that are over-quota, and deleting messages from the Sent folder after 30 days. Yes, I realize very few accounts will *go* over quota with 250mb quotas, but no serious email service has any business even having such a policy.

I had no idea they deleted mail from the sent folder routinely! Of course, I avoid using Hotmail like avoiding the plague.

[IsaacH]

Originally posted by FMRocks
I don't think so. For two reasons.

(2) Hotmail 250MB has NO real advantage in terms of space over Yahoo 100MB. Consider that today, spam accounts for well over half of all email (I am not referring to anyone's mailbox in particular). Hotmail's Junk folder counts towards your message quota. Yahoo's Bulk folder does not. So to make the math easy, let's assume that 50% of the email is junk. Hence, hotmail's real storage is reduced to 125MB - at most. Yahoo's is still 100MB. Minor difference, and hotmail spam is likely more than a mere 50%, wiping out even that differerence.

First of all, mail only stays in Hotmail's junk folder for a limited amount of time (seven days, IIRC) before it's automatically deleted. Secondly, even if that weren't so, you're assuming that the user would never empty his junk mail folder. Really, spam would, at the absolute most, reduce the Hotmail user's storage capacity to 245 megs.

[miley]

Microsoft has said a few times that more than 80% of the mail that hotmail receives is spam. What will hotmail's attachment size limit be? Yahoo is now up to 10MB...

[FMRocks]

Originally posted by IsaacH
First of all, mail only stays in Hotmail's junk folder for a limited amount of time (seven days, IIRC) before it's automatically deleted. Secondly, even if that weren't so, you're assuming that the user would never empty his junk mail folder. Really, spam would, at the absolute most, reduce the Hotmail user's storage capacity to 245 megs.

I am not assuming anything at all. I am just saying how much legitimate email hotmail can hold at the any given point in time, given that more than half of all email is spam and that the junk folder in hotmail counts towards your quota. Is it possible to receive more than 100MB of spam in a week? I say, with hotmail, it's only a matter of time. I stopped using my hotmail account 2 years ago, and I still get 2MB of spam (Mailbox full) every 24 hours. So unless hotmail is going to have a limit of 5MB on the junk folder, it is mathematically possible for spam to take over your entire inbox. In addition, hotmail's spam filter is the worst I have ever experienced - the amount of spam allowed into your inbox (and therefore, say if I don't check my account for a month, not automatically deleted) alone can do the trick. In fact I would be willing to go as far as saying that Microsoft is giving 250MB precisely because they don't intend to reduce spam on free accounts. If you pay, of course, they'll give you a nice filter.

[gdg]

Originally posted by miley
Microsoft has said a few times that more than 80% of the mail that hotmail receives is spam. What will hotmail's attachment size limit be? Yahoo is now up to 10MB...

I think it's going to be the same 10mb limit, unless you pay, then it will be 20mb. I've had three different hotmail accounts that have had spam within the first week of opening any of them, without having even used the email address for anything! Yahoo is infinitely better than Hotmail, unless M$ will stop selling Hotmail email addresses the moment you sign up.

[ckjnigel]

Yahoo mail is great right now. Right now, Gmail is nice.
Right now, Hotmail stinks. But, they've said they'll be rolling out a series of features in the next six months. They've enough money and coding talent to prove competitive.

[Camille]

Originally posted by ckjnigel
But, they've said they'll be rolling out a series of features in the next six months. They've enough money and coding talent to prove competitive.

What sort of new features will they be implementing?

Camille

[LrdVader]

Originally posted by gdgrph
I've had three different hotmail accounts that have had spam within the first week of opening any of them, without having even used the email address for anything! Yahoo is infinitely better than Hotmail, unless M$ will stop selling Hotmail email addresses the moment you sign up.

I've also never used my Hotmail address for much of anything, and it receives no spam at all. Others have reported similar experiences with more complex usernames. So I really don't think MS sells addresses. Hotmail is just a huge target, and is probably being dictionary attacked 24/7/365.