News 

As mailbox sizes grow - Yahoo is currently offering 1GB of disk space to each user (and Yahoo! Mail Plus users get 2GB) - the amount of data kept in mailboxes is growing rapidly. In order to be able to better manage their mail Yahoo! Mail users are being offered a battery of new search-related features.

According to Yahoo!, the new version of Mail can conduct a quick search of e-mail header, body, and attachments and show snippets with highlighted matches on search terms for a quick review of search results.

The client will also

ADVERTISEMENT

display thumbnails of photos and other views of attachments, which makes it easier to scan though pictures and documents saved in email messages. It is claimed that the new version also provides intelligent matching on searches using prefixes of words.

Finally, the options allow for searches that can be organised by sender, folder, attachment type, message status or date.

By 'phased rollout', Yahoo! means that the new features are only available to a limited number of .com users but promises that they will be rolled out worldwide in the coming months.

The announcement comes as Microsoft is readying its own upgrade to the popular Hotmail web-based email system. The new version is said to closely resemble Microsoft's standard Outlook and Outlook Express email clients. New features include email preview, anti-phishing features and the ability to block or unblock specific senders.

The two companies are currently neck and neck in the web-based email marketplace. According to comScore Media Metrix, Microsoft is just ahead of Yahoo with 35.5 per cent and 35.1 per cent of market share respectively.