After Yahoo!, Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) gave its Yahoo! Mail customers unlimited email storage earlier this year, Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Gmail service didn't budge -- it stuck at the 2.8 (roughly) Gigabyte level for its customers. While Google's Gmail can't compare to Yahoo! Mail in terms of users and subscribers, word has it that more technically-adept and power email users are flocking to Gmail in greater numbers. Yahoo! Mail is still the world leader in web-based email service and I don't see that changing any time soon.Enter Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) and its Hotmail web-based email service. Currently at the #2 spot still way ahead of Google's Gmail service, the software giant announced this week that it will bump the online storage for customers of its free Hotmail service from the current two gigabytes to four gigabytes, and will bump paid Hotmail customers (additional features) from five gigabytes to 10 gigabytes. That leaves Google's Gmail service as third in both user base and storage capacity. Will Google respond by giving its email customers more storage?
It may not need to -- two to three gigabytes of email store is probably enough more most global email users (not all, of course). But, if Google wants the media eye candy of saying "unlimited, free email" or something similar, it may choose to respond. If Google also wants Gmail to eventually try and become as large as email services from Yahoo! and Microsoft, it'll have to do something to attract new customers -- customers that can see all those text ads when viewing messages using a standard web browser. Microsoft's Hotmail upgrades will roll out over the next few weeks, according to the company.
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