Yahoo Mail Expands to 1 Gig

Posted May 15, 2005

Your expectations of free email are changing daily.

I debated on where to put this information. But I decided on software because a mail program, although very common, is a piece of online software that most of us take for granted. And because of Google’s push into the free email arena, the capabilities of email are growing daily.

As of last count, my gmail account has almost 2.2 Gigs of space. Everyday that email space keeps growing as Google adds more and more servers.

This amazing amount of free space for email is a new idea. Only a year ago Google Mail was in beta, and all of the other free email players, Hotmail, Yahoo, were still in the dinosaur age, offering anywhere from 10-25 MB of free space. Not more than a few months later Yahoo mail extended to 500 MB, and Hotmail much later to 250.

But as Google expands, Yahoo has been trying to keep up. I am sure still bitter that Google didn’t just work explicitly for their needs back in the days when Google powered search results in Yahoo. At the beginnging of May, Yahoo extended their free email service to 1 Gig.

What I am going to do now is compare the two. I use Yahoo as my primary email, and google as another account with some random people to keep it active. But I have chosen to keep on using Yahoo, read below exactly why.

Address completion

Just like Outlook, Yahoo will complete an email as I type it. I am not one of those people that is good with remembering exact email account addresses. People change their email all the time, and it is hard to keep up. A standard UI option has been to have a “Nickname” which would be a shorter way of remembering an email. Type in the Nickname, the program would know to use the email you assigned to that nickname.

But essentially, it is still the same amount of info to remember. You still have to remember exact nicknames for everyone, and even if you keep it as simple as their first name, what happens when you have two friends named “Steve”?

Well, in the last 6 months or so, Yahoo has implemented this auto completion, where you type anything in the address bar, and it will enter not only a list of possible nicknames, but email addresses as well.

If you notice, this is something that Google Mail also does. It just doesn’t do the nickname part, which is probably a holdover from the original idea. Until I looked just now, I didn’t know Google Mail autocompleted. So Yahoo and Google come in a tie here.

Notifiers

Google has what is called the “Gmail Notifier”. This is basically a little program that runs out of your windows system tray and will tell you when you have new mail. You can set it up to log you in when you boot up the computer, or when you feel like it. This eliminates the need to have a browser open at all times.

Yahoo also does this, but does so in a little bit more cumbersome way. You have to have their messenger and their messenger when notify you will a little tiny popup, like Google, from the system tray that you have gotten new email. I do not factor in a the seperate program anymore now that I use Trillian ( a program that combines all your instant messengers like MSN and AOL into one, a later article.)

In my opinion, they come out even here too.

Email shortcuts

I am only reviewing things that I use here, and shortcuts are one of them.

In Yahoo, you can press Ctrl+Shift+P and you can compose a new message. There are a slew of other shortcuts, like Ctrl+Shift+C to check mail, and Ctrl+Shift+F to browse your folders. I used to really like Yahoo’s shortcuts, but then Google did them one better.

Google’s shortcuts are an option that you can turn on. This means you can use them if you want to, but you don’t have to. Google’s email shortcuts are even shorter, and a touch faster (both are faster than a button click). Compose in Gmail is “C”, and “N” and “P” for next and previous email, to browse through each one.

My main complaint for this one is that you have to click “Settings” in the upper right and then “Learn More” under Keyboard Shortcuts to figure out what they are. I am a lazy internet user, and that is two click too many. Why can’t they have them pop up when you hover over a link if you want, or be on the button options like they are in Yahoo?

For those reasons, I think that Yahoo and Gmail come out even again.

Bottom Line!

Until I wrote this, I hadn’t gone that deep into Gmail, or used it frequently enough to know. All I knew is that I didn’t like the “reply” option being at the bottom of the message. That is unusual for me, and something that will take some getting used to. But Gmail is so fast, using a lot of DHTML and CSS to function.

From what I have seen, Gmail is much more powerful as well, from searching email down to those user options and settings for customizing your email program to fit you, which is a new concept. Why didn’t anyone give us this before. Also, if you use Google for searching, which you should, it seamlessly integrates into all of their other programs.

I am having the two break even, but largely because I have so much time vested in Yahoo now. But after doing this comparison, I am going to try to use Gmail to see more about their features and how they work.