Yahoo! Mail’s unlimited account hits its limit?
Yahoo Mail has fancied its ‘unlimited storage space’ a lot, without actually thinking that users may put that storage space to good use. This is similar to web hosts, who oversell their services, assuming that no customer will use their share of resources completely.
However, I strongly believe that such claims are useless, and in fact, GMail’s 5 GB storage space is a lot more realistic. Label-archive system on GMail trumps any other service’s unlimited mail offerings any day (and I’m still on GMail, happily, I might add).
WSJ blog reports that they hit the limits of their unlimited email account at Yahoo, and their older mails were invisible. They stored all their work emails at Yahoo (totalling to 55,000 mails), and also upgraded to their ‘Plus’ service which costs $19 per year. Yahoo says they will fix it within a month - which, in corporate-speak means they will fix it after a month 
What I do not understand is why Yahoo couldn’t keep intact just 55,000 mails. After compressing (which most mail providers use), 55,000 mails should only be a few GBs in size - quite manageable. Maybe they didn’t compress it in the first place? A better answer maybe that their front end couldn’t handle it.
This reminds me of ISPs getting in a swamp after offering unlimited internet connections to their consumers who promptly used up the maximum bandwidth with BitTorrent et al.
Nirmal said on April 3rd, 2008
Well I think Yahoo had clearly said the unlimited space cannot be used for storing any other things except mails, but now if they cant store mails as well, then its of no use.
Nirmal said on April 3rd, 2008
@Sumesh,
Since you have enabled Comment moderation, at least moderate the comment once in a day, my comment is still in moderation for past 3 days. Just my suggestion.
Post authorSumesh said on April 5th, 2008
@Nirmal: Indeed, it is a marketing technique to say ‘unlimited’. Nothing is unlimited (yet), except their claims, that is
I have enabled comment moderation because I was away from home, and I didn’t want unwanted comments to slip through (I am not talking of you or any other regular reader/commenter, but other trolls)