Yahoo! bests Gmail with unlimited storage

Yahoo! will begin offering unlimited storage for its free web-based email in May. The move makes it the first of the major free email providers to offer unlimited storage but, in all likelihood, it will not be the last.

Yahoo! currently offers 1GB for its free mail service and 2GB for its premium fee-based service. Google's free Gmail service offers more than 2.5GB of storage, and Windows Live Hotmail offers 2GB for free.

John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo! Mail, said: "We are watching the trend lines of how people are using email... and they are sending more photos and videos and rich media."

Google began the storage wars in earnest when it launched Gmail in April 2004 with 1GB of storage. Yahoo! Mail, which launched in 1997 with 4MB of storage, upgraded to 100MB of storage shortly after Google's Gmail announcement, bumped it up to 250MB in late 2004, and then up to 1GB in 2005.

With 250 million users, Yahoo! Mail is the largest global email provider and the largest in the US, according to comScore.

The unlimited storage will begin rolling out globally in May, and Yahoo! expects to have all of its customers covered within a month, except for China and Japan. Kremer said: "We will continue working with these markets on their storage plans."

Elinor Mills writes for CNET News.com