Y! Mail or Gmail? That Is The Question.

With today's main vehicle of sending letters being electronic mail (e-mail), dozens of web-based e-mail programs have been sprouting left and right to vie for Internet users' attention. Each boasts of features which are not present in the others, and frankly, choosing among all of them has been difficult in the earlier years. As time passed and improvements were introduced, most of us became more comfortable in either one or two of these e-mail programs. Two of the web-based e-mail services which surfaced as being most utilized by individuals are Google's Gmail and Yahoo! Mail, both of which are free services (although Yahoo! Mail also offers a paid version in the form of Yahoo! Mail Plus).

There are good and bad points about Gmail and Yahoo! Mail, and this article's content stems from experience of shuttling back and forth the two applications depending on my need at the time I am sending an e-mail. The points of comparison that I would use would be general speed, storage space, attachment size and speed, spam management, user interface, mail forwarding feature and signature management, all of which are the most important facets of an e-mail service in my opinion.

First we start with general speed. I am on broadband connection which gives off a measly 512KB connection, so speed of loading is very important to me. Gmail, with its simpler interface, loads faster in my years of experience in using it. It used to be at par with Yahoo! Mail's speed when the latter was still in classic, but when they switched to the all new interface, it loaded a tad slower (and I blame the tons of page advertisements for that). Next is the storage space. Yahoo! Mail wins in this round, with unlimited storage allotted for each service user, as compared to Gmail, which offers only around 7287 MB at the time of writing (but the Gmail page says that it's increasing free storage by the minute).

Then there's attachment size and speed. Maximum size for Gmail attachment is 20MB for a single e-mail, while Yahoo! Mail offers only half of that. You can have 20MB with Yahoo! Mail, too, but you have to pay the fee of $19.99 (payment for Yahoo! Mail plus upgrade) in order to avail of that. Speed of attachment favors Gmail, as well, as it takes me twice the time to attach a file of the same size in Yahoo! Mail. Spam management has always been a weak side of Yahoo! Mail, as users have been known to complain of the tons of spam that manages to make their way through the Yahoo! Mail inbox even though the spam guard is on.

As for the user interface, I highly appreciate Yahoo! Mail's ability to drag and drop e-mails, work with multiple files, work in multiple tabs and other neat capabilities, features I seriously wish Gmail would have. Physical appearance-wise, Google added themes to their e-mail service a while back, and it did add color to the otherwise boring old interface, and is unique in terms of design, as compared to the colors only options available at Yahoo! Mail. However, Yahoo! Mail offers users several eye candy alternatives in place of the default white stationery that most web-based e-mail services like Gmail. So it spices up and adds a personal touch to users' sent e-mails. Mail forwarding is a feature only available for upgraded Yahoo! Mail users, but Gmail offers it for free, so that's a plus. This option is important for me because I need not open all my Gmail accounts to check incoming mails because I can simply set it to be sent to a single Gmail account with a few settings adjustments. I can even choose for my Gmail messages to arrive at one of my Yahoo! Mail accounts.

Now I know most users make use of a signature which can be found at the end of an e-mail. Yahoo has an easily editable option for affixing one's signature to every outgoing e-mail, although I must point out that the classic version of Yahoo! Mail is way easier to use than the new one. In fact, when I want to modify my signature, I switch back to the old version to fix it and then just go back to the new Yahoo! Mail when I'm done. Gmail, in this aspect, has no option for editing signatures. It is just recently that I found this nifty Firefox extension here (Blank Canvas Gmail Signature) which allowed me to do that.

So which is better? Yahoo! Mail or Google's Gmail? As already mentioned, there are pros and cons to each service, and since both are offered free, why not make use of the two so you can get the most out of each program? Use one or the other depending on your need at the moment. It will be a sweet day when either Yahoo! Mail or Gmail is finally able to incorporate all the features that users are looking for in their respective services. But I am not holding my breath for that day to come. Right now, let's just enjoy what each service has to offer for free.

Admit it. This is a useful post. *grins* And in case you're wondering why I'm acting all weird and what the hell was that post for, well, let me tell you. I wrote that for Helium. For which, they promptly decided to just shut all Filipinos off their site because of some optimal experience shit. Hell, I don't want no optimal experience. I just want my articles to have goddamn earnings every time it is viewed. Okay, I may not be the best writer in the site, but good enough not to get laughed at. I had a Creative Writing Bronze from you guys. *sniff* Could have gone gold if only you let me stay. But you didn't. So. Moving on.