• Reuters, Wednesday, March 28, 2007 12:30 PM

It was bound to happen sooner or later. First it was Google that announced a market-busting 1 gigabyte email storage capacity in 2004, then Microsoft and Yahoo followed suit. Google and Microsoft then upped their storage to beyond 2 gigs, and now Yahoo has become the first to take it to the extreme: unlimited email storage.

Once upon a time, 1 gig was all the storage anyone thought they would need. But nowadays, the proliferation of photos, video, music and other hefty file sizes mean consumers need ever more storage if they don't delete messages. Now, Yahoo co-founder David Filo says proudly, "You can keep stuff forever," adding: "People should think about e-mail as something where they are archiving their lives."

The Web giant´s decision also underlines the rapidly decreasing cost of storage, as new computers can store up to a trillion bytes of data, while owners of 80-gig iPods can carry thousands of hours of music and video in their pockets. For Yahoo, the change to unlimited storage will take about a month.

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