Google One-Ups Yahoo, Doubles Mailbox Size

By George Agathos
Photo & Technology Editor

Less than a week ago, Yahoo announced that it would be increasing its e-mail storage capacity to one gigabyte in an effort to compete with Google's GMail e-mail service, which has been at one gigabyte since its inception.  Now, Google has issued a prompt response to the move, upping their storage capacity to two gigabytes on the program's one-year anniversary.  It is unclear what these capacity-boosts will do to the market, if they do anything.  However, Google plans to "keep up" with the future needs of consumers.

Yahoo has responded with the argument that the extra memory is unnecessary. 

(Editor's note: It is highly unlikely that any one person's e-mails will reach 2GB, ever.  This site itself only takes up about 20MB total.  Given this fact, Google could up it's storage to 10GB and not have to deliver those 10GB to the majority of their users, since their users would have to try pretty hard to fill it, much like how a bank doesn't have to have the cash on hand for all of it's savings accounts.  However, it is important to note that changes in the very nature of e-mail may change that;  video messages and the like would take up much more space and therefore make these 2 gigs useful)

As an April Fool's joke, Google also promised to eventually reach "infinity plus one." A math geek joke, in other words.

GMail is still in beta testing stage, according to the website.