Yahoo boosts storage for e-mail customers

Tuesday, June 15, 2004 | 9:10 a.m.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Yahoo! Inc., owner of the second most-used Internet search engine, is increasing the free storage it offers e-mail customers as Google Inc. is considering plans to provide free e-mail.

Subscribers to Yahoo's free e-mail service will automatically be upgraded to 100 megabytes of storage, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo said in a statement. Users previously had 4 megabytes of storage. Yahoo also said it is opening up more than 50 million additional e-mail addresses.

Yahoo is improving its offering as Google, the world's most- used Internet search engine, is testing a new e-mail service known as Gmail, which gives users 1 gigabyte of storage. Google will link advertisements to users' messages.

Yahoo is expanding the storage for paying subscribers to its premium service to 2 gigabytes from 25 megabytes. Chief Executive Terry Semel said in May he hoped to more than double the number of Yahoo's paying customers to more than 15 million.

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