Peter Griffin: Free webmail competitors flush with features

Users on the free webmail services on offer from Yahoo or Microsoft will soon be getting more for free as the two companies scramble to catch up with the new king of webmail - Google.

While Google has been gathering steam with its stripped-down, high-storage Gmail service, new versions of Yahoo Mail and Hotmail are in beta testing at the moment and should be opened to the public in the next few months as the battle for supremacy in the market for web-based email services develops as a three-horse race.

And, if the screenshots of what Microsoft and Yahoo will soon offer are anything to go by, the trend is to make webmail services identical to desktop email clients such as Outlook, Eudora and Thunderbird.

The Hotmail client has been tweaked over the years, but Kahuna - the nickname for the new version - looks to be a substantial revamp.

Microsoft is bumping the storage limit on Hotmail up to at least 2 gigabytes, which is a thousand times my current free limit of 2 megabytes. If, like me, you save every email sent and received, you need storage on your side.

The future Hotmail will look very similar to Outlook, dividing the client into three panes.

The left one displays the mail inbox, existing messages are in the middle, and the right is a preview pane for reading messages without fully opening them.

A new feature allows users to drag and drop messages between panes and folders. Outlook has always encouraged users to organise messages in folders, and the trend continues here.

That's a different approach to Gmail, where a search engine is used to trawl your messages wherever they are (personally, I like Gmail's approach.)

Kahuna and the revamped Yahoo Mail, which also goes for a three-pane approach, are both based on the versatile web standard AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML), which gives greater flexibility for new features than Hotmail's current, largely HTML-based client.

The use of panes should allow for messages to load quicker because the page will load in sections.

Hotmail's calendar and contacts sections are also getting revamps and there's an increased focus on security. A new "infobar" will control virus and spam detection settings, and Hotmail will also scan for phishing attacks - attempts to steal account and financial information so bank and online shopping accounts can be electronically plundered.

Still, American reviews point to limitations inherent in web-based services.

Users can't scroll through messages as they can in desktop mail clients and to view older messages, they have to click to a new screen.

It also doesn't appear that Microsoft will rid Hotmail of one annoying deficiency - having to save or discard a message being composed before jumping to another one, or checking the inbox.

There's talk of RSS feeds being incorporated into Hotmail, which would allow users to display updating news and website feeds in their email client.

Back in 2002, when I talked to Sabeer Bhatia, the man who in 1997 sold Hotmail to Microsoft for US$400 million, he didn't think a 2MB free account size limit would become a problem.

Bhatia was concerned that the huge amount of spam that was being dumped on webmail users would turn people off such services.

That's not such a nightmare anymore. I use Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail and find the spam-filtering for all services to be very effective.

Sure, the spam folder is often bulging with junk mail, but I just browse it every so often for amusement. Out of sight, out of mind - spam rarely interrupts my day any more.

My problem with Hotmail is that I'm still stuck with a 2MB account, which these days just doesn't cut it.

Gmail offers 2.65GB, and it's surprising how quickly that can be chewed through if you don't discard anything.

Microsoft last year upgraded its free Hotmail storage to 250MB, but seems to be making the change gradually. A disclaimer on the Hotmail website states: "We are working to enhance the inbox storage size".

Screenshots of the new Yahoo Mail show it bears an uncanny three-pane resemblance to Outlook. It's certainly a major overhaul.

Yahoo offers 1GB storage for free accounts.

All of the services feature adverts. Gmail displays them down the right side of the screen alongside email. It scans the text of the email to generate appropriate ads. Therefore, a message from a Sydneysider talking about the weather, might generate ads touting "cheap flights to Sydney" and "Sydney jobs".

There's talk that Hotmail, which is currently peppered with ads, will replicate Gmail's advertising approach, but use an opt-in approach.

Yahoo won't scan email message for context-based advertising, but will still display adverts around the email client.

There's one main reason users may want to stick with Hotmail or Yahoo for webmail, and that's because an account is generally needed to sign up for messaging services. The two companies are merging their messaging platforms next year, but Gmail doesn't seem to be joining the party.

If you want to check out the beta version of Kahuna, sign up using the link below. The Yahoo Mail beta is still in private testing.