Yahoo Answers Back

[brahamt]

Yesterday, as I have my Yahoo mail up, all of a sudden the screen refreshes and I have a completely new web page. Most of the ads are gone, and the buttons have a 3D look to them. I have the paid service, but this was my free one. So I checked my paid account, and I got the following email:

Dear Yahoo! Mail Plus Subscriber,

Thanks for subscribing to Yahoo! Mail Plus. It's our goal to offer you an email experience that makes it easy to stay in touch and offers great value. Periodically, we make changes to enhance the service for our users. As of June 15, 2004, you'll enjoy the following benefits at no additional charge:
Increase in your storage quota to 2GB
No graphical ads
A streamlined interface that's even easier to use
You will continue to access your Yahoo! Mail account as usual. No further action is required, and there will be no interruption of your service. At the end of your current billing cycle, unless you cancel before that date, your Mail Plus service will auto-renew at $19.99/year*. For more information, please click here.

Sincerely,
The Yahoo! Mail Team

Not free as gmail is, but no advertising. Then I noticed that I got 100MB on my free account.

Not bad, considering I did not have to do anything.

[Alexander Turcic]

I think it's generally a good thing that companies like Yahoo try to answer Google's Gmail challenge by adding e-mail storage. The stronger the competition, the better for consumers and for the overall industry.

I only feel bad for the smaller companies who have tried to find a niche market by offering online services such as e-mail storage, web space storage or - more general - web hosting. It looks very much like we will have a consolidation among the bigger companies in near future.

[brahamt]

I agree 100% with everything you said.

There was a time when I thought consolidation of things would be a good thing, but the smaller services seemed to give much better service than the larger consolidated players.

In the US, AT&T at one point had long distance service, local service, and wireless service all under one umbrella. They sold it as one bill, one customer service number, etc, etc. The problem was they never got that going and I had two, sometimes three bills coming from the same company. Then they sold off the wireless business and I just dropped them all (I only have a wireless phone now from a different company).

Anyway for the short term, this is a good thing, especially since, like I said, it helps me.

[Alexander Turcic]

And Microsoft follows... from CNet: "The upgrade will increase Hotmail's free e-mail storage limits from 2 megabytes to 250MB and its paid e-mail service, which costs $19.95 a year, from 10MB to 2 gigabytes. The changes will begin in early July."

[cbarnett]

Hmmmm, you still have to pay to get the big storage with Yahoo and Hotmail, so I'm afraid it will probably be too little, too late for them. Why pay for 2 GB storage, when Gmail will provide 1 GB for free? Who will really _need_ that extra GB?

My Yahoo account has been my primary email address since 1996, but if Gmail is all it appears to be (and I can ever get an account ) I will switch over without too much grief.

PS - In the meantime, Hotmail is making yahoo look cheap with it's "measly" 100MB mailbox, lol (I never thought I'd see the day I said that!)

[cyberax]

Hi cbartnett..

PM me with your email address and name to forward you the Google's GMail invitation mail to get a 1GB mail account.

Cheers

[derekweb]

I myself paid for Yahoo services after determining that Hotmail just didn't do it for me when I opened my Hotmail account and automatically (before being 5 minutes old) had 25 spam messages waiting for me.

Now I keep Hotmail around for hte garbage mail, and yahoo for my primary. I've been happy with Yahoo's performance prior to their upgrades, and now I'm even happier. GMail doesn't impress me since I don't exactly care for their terms of use (eg: they'll scan your mail and send you ads through what they read. ... ack! I don't want anyone doing that! I hate ads, and I hate the notion of being relegated back to childhood and having someone watch over everything I do!)

[brahamt]

I too paid for the Yahoo mail, but I use it for business purposes only. I like the stability and the fact that I have had it for years now.

Scan my mail?! No I don't think so. I like the idea of GMail, it just ain't for me.

[alexstapleton]

Can anyone come up with an actual complaint against gmails mail scanning other than "argh its scary!"?

Seriously now. It's just a script. It doesn't know anything about you. All it cares about is finding some adverts relevant to what your looking at.

Now of course there is the possibility of abuse, but thats there with any email service, so it's a totally crap point to make against GMail.

So can anyone actually say WHY GMail's email scanning is a bad thing? "It's scary/creepy/insulting/spying on me." Doesn't count. Because it isn't any of those things.

[brahamt]

You make a good point, but it is the fact that it is scary/creepy/insulting that gives me pause. Why? Because it is usually the first step in getting to a place I don't want to be.

If I had nothing, then I would try it with no qualms. But I have alternatives.

[alexstapleton]

In what similiar cicrumstances? Your gut reaction is "it's bad" but is your gut reaction right? Do you even have evidence to backup why "it's bad" based on previous experiences in similiar situations? All you've said is what you said before. "It's scary. I don't like it." You haven't actualy qualified your argument.

[cbarnett]

I agree alex. How is Gmail's scanning any different to the spam scanning Yahoo already does. As soon as you send your email it passes through so many other systems that it's totally unrealistic to think it's private in any way. If you want private email, encrypt it.

Craig.

[alexstapleton]

E-Mail is not a private system for sending messages as much as people might like it to be. It is built on trust just like the real postal service. If you do not trust your provider, or the people you send email (both the recipient and their host) or the intermediary servers the message may pass through then don't use it. Theres nothing inherrently untrustworth about GMail. Google is a legitimate company, that is going public, that has a superb reputation. So unless all the Gmail haters know something about Google that I dont, they are talking complete nonsense. As the last post says (cant remember who it's from my mouse is broken and scrolling AND getting to this edit box is totally out of the question it takes bloody ages to do anything!) if you want privacy your going to have to encrypt your messages. Thats the only way you can be sure (sort of) that your email isnt being read by people inbetween you and the recipient.

[brahamt]

Originally Posted by alexstapleton

In what similiar cicrumstances? Your gut reaction is "it's bad" but is your gut reaction right? Do you even have evidence to backup why "it's bad" based on previous experiences in similiar situations? All you've said is what you said before. "It's scary. I don't like it." You haven't actualy qualified your argument.

Well that is what a gut reaction is. I don't have to qualify a gut reaction. That is the point, it is a reaction without thought, just instinct. My instinct tells me that I want to stay away. Again, not because I think it's bad, but because other alternatives exist that satisfy me.

And as for whether or not my gut reaction is right or wrong (it is probably wrong in this case, but no matter), if you go against it, you better have good cause to do so. I don't have any reason to do so at the moment.

Finally, let me be clear, I NEVER said it was bad. I only implied that other things exist that I am more comfortable with.

[derekweb]

Hmmmm, I'm not sitting with the exact details in front of me at the moment, however let me try to qualify my dislike of some of GMails features, and even to compare against Yahoo (which I shelled out $29 for).

GMail ...
- 2gb Mail Limit
- Scans your messages (by script) seeking to throw an Ad (popup or embedded, it is unknown at this point)
- Web Based Interface


Yahoo ...
- 1 gb Mail Limit overall, 25mb per message for attachments.
- Scans your messages (by script) seeking to reduce the spam in your mailbox. Files found spam messages under BULK.
- Web Based Interface, along with POP3 and IMAP compatible for desktop software compatibility.


The difference, as I see it, is that one seeks to innundate me with more ADS, and I *hate* ads, and the other is seeking to try to reduce the crapload of spam coming my way. Some people don't care about the Ads. To me, they are more than just annoying. So even if it's free, why would I want to expose myself to even MORE advertisements by giving someone permission to scan my email, even if it is by script, so that they can customise their advertisements? This is my reason for not wanting to try out GMail.

Hope this helps others understand my reluctance. If you choose to use GMail, I wish you the best and I hope it treats you right. For me, it's just personal preference.