Yahoo! Rolls Out Unlimited Email Storage

I'm not just a contractor for Yahoo!, I'm also a client, having recently moved to Yahoo! Mail for my primary email account. (And lest you think I get special treatment, I pay the $20 a year for Yahoo! Mail Plus just like everyone else. As always, all opinions in this blog post are my own, though Yahoo! owns and operates the site you're reading.) And with my long-winded intro out of the way, here's the news you've probably already heard: Unlimited storage at Yahoo! Mail, starting in May.

That makes posts like this one (about deleting old messages to free up space) pretty much obsolete. (Unless, that is, you're like me, and you use Yahoo! Mail offline.)

But even for us offliners, this move is a good one: Now I can go for months without checking email (yeah, right!) and not having to worry about the message folder filling up and rejecting new messages. Naturally, many may feel a tendency to use their email account as a backup service or a holding tank for large files. That won't be allowed (abusive accounts may be suspended from sending and receiving messages, but Yahoo! says it won't delete emails or deactivate access to them). I also suspect the 20MB-per-message limit will stay the same though no announcement has been made on this front. (Note to world: Please don't send me any 20MB messages.)

To put this in perspective, Yahoo! Mail VP John Cremer notes that "When Yahoo! Mail launched 10 years ago, users got a whopping 4MB of storage for their entire mailbox. Today, you would fill that up with a single picture from your weekend." Other fun facts: At launch time, the total capacity for the entire Yahoo! Mail system was 200GB... which represents 10 minutes worth of incoming mail today. The times, they are a-changin'.

What's next? Some are talking about other Yahoo! services expanding their storage space. (Unlimited Flickr account? Ars Technica thinks so...) Come on, Yahoo! Keep the cool stuff coming!