Te E-mail War
Sunday, July 29, 2007
E-mail service has grown up lot ahead than just E-mail. Now only sending and receiving E-mails won't solve the purpose of a mail account. This is the time when the consumers are looking ahead of plain E-ails. And the biggest competition is among Gmail and Yahoo. Thought other mail services such as Rediffmail, Zapakmail are trying to enter the competition with the help of aggressive marketing through TV and Radio jingles.
Here is a short description about two of the leading E-mail services.
GMAIL
Experts still say that Gmail is the best webmail service overall, but it has new competition in the redesigned version of Yahoo! Mail. Gmail gets the most press for its 2.65GB of storage space, but Gmail also gets kudos for its intuitive organization features; users can assign labels to individual e-mails for sorting, and to organize chats and IM sessions by subject, just like regular e-mail. Also completely integrated with Gmail is Google's chat function. Google is the only provider that allows users to keep track of a chat session just like an e-mail session. You can access Gmail through a desktop e-mail client (such as Outlook Express), and Gmail gives infrequent users a lot of latitude, only canceling an account after nine months of inactivity.
YAHOO
Although the revamped version of Yahoo! Mail gives users just 1GB of storage (compared to Gmail's 2.65GB) reviews say it has a terrific interface that trumps Gmail in some areas. Yahoo! Mail's three-pane screen looks a lot like Outlook Express, and it's the only major free e-mail service that lets you read an e-mail while still being able to view your inbox. Tabbed messages let you easily flip between two or more e-mails. One downside is that Yahoo! Mail won't let you forward mail unless you pay for its Yahoo! Mail Plus service (*est. $20 per year). For those who already have a Yahoo! mail account switching to the new interface is a no-brainer. Others will have to weigh Yahoo!'s intuitive interface against Gmail's larger storage and integrated chat function. Reviews say that Yahoo!'s graphical ads are more obtrusive than Gmail's more subtle text ads.
