Starting May 2007, Yahoo is going to offer unlimited inbox storage. That's right, to celebrate their 10th anniversary, there will be absolutely no limit on the number of messages you can hold in your mailbox.

This is obviously to compete with Google's Gmail and other similar providers, which are offering gigabytes at a time for inbox storage. Going from 1 gigabyte to unlimited storage is quite a bit of an upgrade. However, in my opinion, I think that inbox storage size is becoming rather irrelevant in deciding which mail provider to choose. Why? Well, I don't know about you, but I haven't used more than a few megabytes in my Gmail inbox storage.

The funny thing about this whole "storage" thing in the email world is that it gives you a false impression of how much space the provider really does have. For example, if Gmail partitioned off their drive into 2.8 GB sections, they'd be out of space so fast. They have a lot of space, but I can be pretty sure that they don't have enough space if everyone used up their whole 2.8 GBs.

So judging by that, the vast majority of the public does not use up more than 1 or 2 percent of their inbox storage space. And why should they? Email is just text (with the occasional attachment, true). You don't see these same providers that offer gigabytes and gigabytes worth of inbox storage allow you to use that as webspace for file storage, do you?

Yes, inbox storage was an issue back when the average free storage hovered around 4 or 5 megabytes. I can understand it then, when a single attachment could potentially fill up your entire inbox before you even have time to empty it. But now... I'd say that 2 or 3 gigabytes is almost enough to hold an entire lifetime's worth of email (at least for some people).

Sorry to spoil the party, but I'm just not that impressed at the storage that Yahoo if offering. They're just taking a bigger gamble than Gmail and Hotmail and the other providers out there, and it's a pretty safe gamble. But perhaps there's some qualities you want to look for in email providers other than inbox storage? Not saying that Yahoo's other qualities suck or anything...