Up goes Gmail

SAN FRANCISCO: Google Inc., which took the first shot in the free e-mail storage battle with the release of its Gmail product last year, said on Thursday it is doubling free storage to 2 gigabytes shortly after Yahoo Inc. matched its original offer.

Google said the increase will not be the last from the company, which intends to make further free storage increases on its Web e-mail system as user needs expand.

"We plan on continuing this increase for the foreseeable future," said Georges Harik, product management director for Gmail.

Harik said that "less than a few percent" of Gmail users are bumping up against the 1 gigabyte limit.

"We're doing it to anticipate what our users needs are and their needs grow over time," he said. The Web search leader did not immediately say how many Gmail accounts have been created.

Gmail, which is still in testing, is now offered only as an English-language service.

Consumers are increasingly using their e-mail inboxes to store everything from work documents and correspondence to larger digital music, video and photo files. At the same time, the price of providing Web e-mail storage has been in steep decline.

Yahoo last week said it would begin giving users of its free Web e-mail service 1 gigabyte of storage, four times more than it had previously offered.

"We're hoping to remove storage as a concern for Yahoo users," Yahoo spokeswoman Karen Mahon said of her company's latest move.

"At a certain point beyond 1 gigabyte it just becomes a number and irrelevant to most free e-mail users," Mahon said.

Yahoo Mail, available in 15 languages in almost two dozen countries around the world, gives users 2 gigabytes of storage for $20 a year.

Microsoft Corp. offers 250 megabytes of storage to users of its free MSN Hotmail accounts. Like Yahoo, it offers 2 gigabytes of storage for an annual fee of $20.