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Yahoo Inc. is more than doubling its limits on free e-mail storage in its latest move to combat two of its biggest rivals, Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

E-mail accountholders will get up to 250 megabytes of free storage effective Monday, up from 100 megabytes previously offered by Sunnyvale-based Yahoo. The change follows Microsoft’s recent decision to boost the free storage on its Hotmail service to 250 megabytes per account.

Both Yahoo and Hotmail have dramatically increased their storage limits since Google rolled out its free e-mail service offering in April. The Google service, called Gmail, offers each accountholder up to 1,000 megabytes of e-mail storage.

Yahoo, which runs the world’s most popular Web site, is hoping the improvements will retain its current e-mail users and perhaps lure converts from other services.

Unlike Yahoo’s e-mail service and Hotmail, Gmail remains in a test mode and is available only through invitations from Google or existing accountholders.

“Gmail is an interesting competitor,” said Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo’s vice president of communications products. “It really has raised the game for everyone and that’s good for consumers.”

Besides increasing storage limits, Yahoo says it has upgraded the tools for verifying the identities of e-mailers and improved the features used to search e-mail content.

Yahoo promotes itself as the largest provider of free e-mail, with tens of millions of users. The company declined to offer precise numbers.

News source: ABCNews

Hot on the heels of its big storage boost, MSN is rolling out so-called “life management” features like calendaring, task lists, notes, and reminders to users of its free e-mail service.The new features, which were previously only available to paying customers, take a page from Microsoft’s desktop mail application, Outlook. They’re also very similar to what’s offered for free by MSN competitor Yahoo!

The upgrade, originally announced with the increased storage plans back in June, will be rolled out to more than 180 million free Hotmail users around the world. It launches on Tuesday and will continue over the next couple of days.

MSN won’t be serving any ads on the pageviews the additional features will generate. Instead, the roll-out is a move to build greater user loyalty to the MSN brand.

“MSN’s goal with these Hotmail improvements is to insure that customers are increasingly satisfied with the world’s largest free Web e-mail system,” said Brooke Richardson, product manager for MSN, in a statement.

The online calendar features the ability to send meeting requests, as well as to share calendar entries with family and friends. Icons and color coding allow users to keep track of different types of appointments.

The tasks function lets users to keep track of to-do items and includes reminders, which can go to users’ e-mail addresses or to their mobile phones via SMS messaging. Reminders can also be set up independently of tasks.

Notes let users store important information online, so it can be accessed from any PC with a browser.

The imminent debut of Google’s 1 gigabyte free e-mail service, Gmail, currently in beta, has upped the ante among Web-based e-mail players. Yahoo! was first to step up to the challenge, offering a re-design and 100 megabytes of storage for its free service. Paying Yahoo! customers get 2 gigabytes. Hotmail in June announced it would begin giving free e-mail users 250 megabytes and paying customers 2 gigabytes.

News Source : clickz

Hotmail will announce plans to offer more space to customers. In a bid to rival Google’s upcoming Gmail, MSN plan to give free customers as much as 250meg of email space. MSN will also announce a plan to have a “plus” paid version of Hotmail for $19.95 a year which will include 2gig of email space.

Free Hotmail Service:

250meg storage 10meg attachment limit

30 day expiry if no activity

Antivirus scan & clean

Hotmail Plus Service:

Annual fee (price varies per country) expected to be $19.95

2gig of storage 20meg attachment limit

No expire date

No unneeded graphics or ads

Access to pop3 settings

Antivirus scan & clean

MSN Premium subscribers are expected to get the same as the Hotmail Plus Service subscribers.

News Source : Neowin