I used to be a lifelong addict of Yahoo Mail until Gmail lured me away with lots of space (2.9GB at the time of writing this) and lots of other cool features. But in the past few weeks I have procrastinated over whether to return to Yahoo Mail. Gmail is starting to annoy me partly because it is so damn slow and partly because I am deeply shocked that Gmail's response to Yahoo's unlimited email space was to.....charge users for more email space! Yahoo offers unlimited FREE email space and a very reasonable $25 a year for unlimited Flickr space, whereas Google is demanding $500 for 250GB of space for email and photos. $500! The very thought makes me sick.

If you can get free unlimited space at Yahoo, what makes Google think that people will shell out up to $500 for 250GB? The brand name? The Google "coolness" factor? I don't think so. I sure as hell won't spend that kind of money. Gmail already makes money off me by shoving adverts in my email space. In fact it downright pisses me off that Google has the nerve to charge like this when their direct rival is giving it away for nothing. At the very least, Google could put their prices down significantly. But $500? That's just really greedy. Especially for a product that is STILL not out of beta after 3 years (or is it 4 years?). I am not advocating for one moment that everything on the internet should be free but where is the marketing sense in charging users for something that your fiercest rival is giving away for nothing? I'd like someone at Google to explain the logic behind that one. Let's be honest - if two shopkeepers, side by side, offered the same product and one was free and the other was $500, which one would you take? It's only human nature to be drawn to the free one.

So partly to get this all straight in my head, here are the pros and cons of each service. I'd appreciate your thoughts and opinions.

Gmail : http://mail.google.com

Pros :
conversation views
labelling
good search functions
excellent filters (especially the spam filters)
ability to add photos in contact book
tight integration with calendar and Google Talk
lots of add-ons and user scripts that integrate Gmail with calendar, RSS reader, and Google IG.
built in Google chat and chat logs archived & searchable.
the best one though is the ability to collect email from other email services and send email from those addresses INSIDE Gmail. Plus the keyboard shortcuts are excellent.

Cons :
at times, Gmail is unavailable or really slow.
Gmail also claims their spam folders and trash folders auto-delete after 30 days but I checked those folders the other day and there are emails in there going back to June (which for all you mathematically challenged people out at the Googleplex is 90 days, not 30).
My biggest concern though is that it takes ages to open an email or to show emails under a certain label (if you click on that label). The more emails you have, the longer it takes (so giving you more space kind of defeats the purpose if you have to delete some emails to make it go faster).
Speed is definately the biggest problem for Gmail. Before you ask, I have no Greasemonkey scripts for Gmail to slow things down - only a Better Gmail Firefox extension from Lifehacker (and I don't even use half of the features that Better Gmail offers).
Hardly anybody uses Google Talk, making the whole in-built chat thing redundant.
Oh and one last thing, Gmail shows up as a complete mess on the Opera internet browser. The Gmail interface is like a dog's dinner and totally unreadable and unusable.


Yahoo Mail : http://mail.yahoo.com

Pros :
An excellent Instant Messaging client (which millions of people use) which is integrated into Yahoo Mail.
Completely free unlimited email space which means I can back up my files and MP3's.
A drag and drop interface.
Since my website and business email is with Yahoo (currently being forwarded to Gmail), I can have all my email together in the one place.
One click links to empty spam and trash - without having to go into those folders first (which I wish Gmail would hurry up and do).
More reliable than Gmail and virtually 100% uptime. I have rarely seen Yahoo Mail crash.
A search capability to find emails again.
The contact book has spaces to record Skype ID's and other instant messaging ID's.

Cons :
The interface is a little on the clunky side. Too much on the main page such as news headlines and weather.
As far as I can see, I can't export my Gmail filters and labels. I also can't export my Google RSS reader subscriptions. So I would have to start them from scratch (a major pain in the ass).
If I use up a lot of space, will Yahoo Mail slow down significantly, just like Gmail?
No ability to add photos to my contact book, so the contact book lacks personalisation.


The biggest inconvenience though is one of my own making in that I have completely married myself to the Google concept - so I use Google Docs, Google Talk and this blog is hosted on Blogger. All of these things are connected through my Google Account. So if I were to break away and use Yahoo Mail, I would have to either stop using Google Docs, Talk and Blogger, or maintain both the Yahoo account AND the Google account.

I guess some more procrastination will be needed! Any opinions and thoughts would be appreciated in the comments.