Beyond Fiction

Well, I’m not sure how long the news has been out but I ran across an article today on yodel.yahoo.com concerning Yahoo! Mail:

As Yahoo! Mail approaches its 10-year anniversary, I’m the lucky one who gets to announce that we will begin offering everyone unlimited email storage starting in May 2007.

Of course, I have been slowly making the switch to Gmail but does this warrant another look at Yahoo! Mail?I guess the main issue is do we really need unlimited email storage? With the 1GB limit at Gmail I have never even came close to using all that. My opinion is that Yahoo! needs to make a few more changes elsewhere in order to keep their current subscribers. Here are a few of my suggestions:

Give us free POP3 access! I am one of those who prefers using Outlook Express to access my email. This was one of the main reasons I switched to Gmail.

Do something to upgrade your Spam Filters! I am not an expert at this but I am overwhelmed by the amount of spam that you receive using Yahoo! Mail.

Allow us a way to integrate our Yahoo! IDs. One of the things I have had to do with Yahoo! is to create different accounts for different purposes. This enabled me to focus on what I wanted and still have room for all that spam!

Allow us more filters to help combat spam. I believe 15 is a very small number compared to the number of spammers out there!

One thing I did enjoy about Yahoo! was the user interface was fairly nice and you were able to change it if you desired. I also preferred Yahoo! IM over any of the others, although I rarely use IM services anymore.

I know that the promise of unlimited storage sounds so cool, but do you really think they will allow you to store something that is 5GB? I believe the limit will still stay at 10MB, which to me is too small. I believe the things I listed are what need changing more than anything. I’d settle for 500MB of storage if I could have effective spam filtering and free POP3 access.

For some this news will come as a very welcome gift. For others, such as myself, this news just means that Yahoo! still is missing the point in what its subscribers are wanting.

So, are you going to make the switch?