Yahoo fortifies free e-mail to fight Google

SAN FRANCISCO — Internet giant Yahoo! Inc. is fortifying its free e-mail service with 25 times more storage and freeing up millions of previously claimed e-mail addresses in an effort to thwart a looming threat from its increasingly disruptive rival Google Inc.

Beginning today, all of Yahoo’s free e-mail accounts will be upgraded to 100 megabytes, a move spurred by Google’s plans to offer 1,000 megabytes of free storage through its Gmail service, which has remained in a test phase since early April.

Yahoo has been offering 4 megabytes of free e-mail storage, although some people with accounts opened several years ago have 6 megabytes of free storage.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo disclosed that it would be increasing its free storage to 100 megabytes during an analyst meeting held last month, but hadn’t provided a specific time for the upgrade until now.

Angling for new users, Yahoo also has decided to let people begin signing up for addresses that have been inactive for years. The offer is designed to lure Web surfers who may have been previously interested in signing up for a free Yahoo e-mail account only to learn one of their preferred handles had already been claimed.