Yahoo Mail vs Gmail vs Hotmail - Which is the best?

Yahoo Mail, Gmail and Hotmail are all trusted and highly successful online service providers.

Yahoo Mail owned by Yahoo Inc is a world renowned online service provider. The signup is easy and simple and the various services offered by it are neatly listed on the left side of the main page. The home page is simple and easy on the eye. It has many built- in features to prevent password theft and hacking such as the sign-in seal, which will be a secret message or photo, displayed by Yahoo to make sure that the member is on a genuine Yahoo site.

Members can send and receive mail on their mobile while travelling apart from availing Free Mail Alerts and accessing Address Book and Mail folders all under the normal data transfer charges. The yahoo messenger offers easy PC-to-PC calls worldwide, with exceptional sound quality and Emoticons, avatars, IMVironments, etc. to pep up tour chat sessions!

Yahoo Mail Plus includes Spam Guard Plus, 2GB storage space and up to 20MB for larger attachments at a nominal cost. You can set up a Personal Address and a 10MB mail box. Small and medium businesses can own their own domain along with 10 email accounts, 2GB of storage space per account and POP access, free of advertisements. Members can also create a professional website with Yahoo tools.

Gmail, is a free Webmail and POP3 e-mail service provided by Google. Developed in 2004 it has become one of the most popular online service providers of the world, that boasts of millions of loyal customers hooked by its dependability and power packed features. It offers over 2.8 GB of file storage, a search-oriented interface and a unique 'conversation view', powered by its Ajax programmed design. Before being acquired by Google, the gmail.com domain name was used by the free e-mail service offered by Garfield.com, online abode of the cartoon character, Garfield.

The home page done up in light blue tones with its hallmark emblem of an envelope is pleasant and readily strikes a chord with its users. Gmail is hyped for its fast search powered by google search engine that enables you to find the exact message you want, irrespective of the time period. It digs out even archived email with élan! It offers an unmatched space of over 2833.078011 megabytes of free storage so that you will never be put off by the inbox full alert message. You can chat or save the chat if you wish in your Gmail account apart from connecting it to your mobile phone. You can also access all the mail and their corresponding replies in chronological order that keeps you firmly on track, without needing to flip over to the previous mails.

If all these features were not enough it has an amazing language support which currently supports 40 languages, which include Arabic, Brazilian, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, and many, many more!

Hotmail.com, founded in 1995 by Jack Smith and Sabeer Bhatia is a Web portal and web-based e-mail provider from Microsoft. Users can easily sign in with a user name and password. The home page in cool blue shades is attractive and the various links such as MSN Home, My MSN, Shopping, Money, People and Chat and an MSN search are neatly organized at top. The members are entitled to access e-mail from any web connected computer anywhere in the world; apart from sending and receiving up to 10 MB of attachments per e-mail where the MSN Junk e-mail filters keep the spam that fill your inboxes, at bay! All the links are swift and simple to operate.

Apart from emails you can send instant messages or chat with the MSN Messenger. Adding more contacts or starting a chat session is quite simple with hotmail. Most of the services are free to members. If you wish you can also subscribe to MSN Hotmail and MSN Messenger on Mobile Phones. Hotmail.com generates income from its bouquet of services and advertisements.

It goes without saying that the sheer magnitude of features and power has made gmail.com a favourite abode of many a net browser! Gmail is definitely the best online service provider of the lot. Though developed much earlier, it was open to public only on February 14, 2007 to reduce the chances of abuse and hacker attacks. Within this short span of a few months it has created a flutter in the webspace and is steadily heading to be a world leader in the days to come.

Usha Hari

Hi-Tech Editorial Division