Not to be outdone, Yahoo! offers its Mail Plus for the same annual price. This premium service combines all the free account’s features with 2GB of storage and a 20MB limit on individual messages. Yahoo! also throws in a few other features (such as POP access and forwarding, better spam control, and freedom from graphical ads), which we’ll talk about later in this article.

  Interface

Many computer users are accustomed to traditional client/server interfaces, such as Microsoft Outlook, with its folder storage system. Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail use the same sort of system online, with different virtual folders containing messages. They also offer filter capability to automatically sort incoming messages into specific folders according to user-specified rules. Hotmail allows 10 custom filters in its free account; Yahoo! Mail tops that with 15. Pay the premium fee and you’ll get 35 filters in Hotmail and 50 in Yahoo! Mail.

Instead of sorting and saving your email in various folders, Gmail takes a new approach. All mail starts out in the inbox and then Gmail moves it all into one big archive folder. If you like the feel of folders, you can still assign labels to various messages for organization, but the service encourages the use of its fast search capability instead for finding messages on the fly.

Gmail messages can have multiple labels. You also can use Gmail’s labels in conjunction with as many as 20 filters to automatically label and archive email. You can use the filters to automatically forward messages to other people.

Also innovative is Gmail’s method of grouping messages and their replies into conversations, which gives related email messages a thread-like feel. Numbers in parentheses next to the authors’ names indicate how many messages make up a conversation. Click once to open the conversation and then click subject lines to open particular messages.

Which interface you like depends on personal preference, but the Gmail system is intriguing. On its surface Gmail looks like a standard email service, with an inbox and other folders (actually labels). Once you get the feel for the one-folder archiving system, however, you may wonder what all of those folders were for in the first place.

  Search Component

If Hotmail has a search function, it’s hiding it under a bushel basket. Thankfully, Gmail and Yahoo! Mail are loud and proud about their search capabilities.

Yahoo! Mail is no slouch when it comes to searching existing messages. The basic search will scan the Senders and Subjects of messages; a more advanced search lets you explore individual message fields or a combination. You also set the parameters to Contains, Does Not Contain, or Is Exactly the term(s) you have entered and specify the folders to search.

If you’ve been archiving your Gmail instead of deleting, you can use the service’s search feature to locate any message you’ve sent or received. Using its built-in Google search, Gmail handles searches deftly, with impressive results.

  Compose Messages

Formatting is the one place where the Gmail beta drags. Rumor has it the rollout version will have formatting capability, but for now, you’ll have to express emphasis and enthusiasm the old-style way, with all capitals, punctuation, or language. Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail let you format your text vividly, adding style, font, bullets, and even emoticons.

All three services offer spell checkers, but Hotmail goes a step further with a built-in dictionary and thesaurus courtesy of Encarta. Each service also offers the convenience of draft folders, so if you’re writing a message on the fly, you can save it and return to it later when you have a bit more time.

If you don’t remember everyone’s email address, the Address AutoComplete feature in Yahoo! suggests address matches as you begin to type, based on the contents of your Address Book. Gmail works similarly.

Hotmail’s Quickname feature is a less automated version that takes more work. With Quickname, you choose an identifier for each email address in your Contacts list. When composing an email, you just type the Quickname and Hotmail fills in the email address.

  Address Book

Gmail’s contact list is lean and easy to use, but it offers the least amount of customization. You can keep real-world info, such as street addresses and phone numbers, in Gmail’s Contacts list, but it isn’t built to take the place of a real address book. For example, there’s no way to sort contacts. You also cannot define sets of contacts for easy group mailing.

The Yahoo! Address Book does let you group your contacts into as many as 20 categories, making it easy to find a specific contact or create distribution lists. The QuickBuilder tool can search existing Yahoo! Mail messages for contact info and add it to your Address Book automatically.

Hotmail has multiple ways to add contacts, with buttons to add names when you’re composing messages or reading them. Its Group feature lets you move contacts into groups, as well.

Mass emails are limited by all three services. Hotmail is again the most restrictive, limiting the number of recipients to 50 email addresses per message, even spread out among the To, Cc, and Bcc lines. Yahoo! Mail and Gmail each allow you to send a message to as many as 100 email addresses.

  Import Contacts

Adding contacts one by one can be tedious. All three programs can import addresses from a variety of email programs to get you up and running in no time. Yahoo! Mail imports information using a wizard that prompts you each step of the way. For example, the wizard can find your Outlook address book and offers a list of contacts to import. For other types of address books, you have to first save the information as a CSV (comma separated values) file before you can import it.

Hotmail can also import contact information, but even with Outlook you have to save the contacts to a CSV file first. After you do that, a Hotmail wizard helps you through the rest. Gmail works about the same way. You must format contacts to CSV files first and then import the files and transfer them to Gmail. In addition to Outlook files, you can import addresses from Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, among others.

  Antivirus Protection

Virus protection is essential, especially with spam-prone Web-based email. Yahoo! Mail’s service isn’t automated, but it requires a scan before you can open an attachment. When you receive an email that includes an attachment, click the Scan And Download Attachment prompt and Yahoo! Mail’s built-in Norton AntiVirus tool will scan the attachment. If the software identifies a virus, Yahoo! Mail notifies you and seizes the opportunity to try to sell you an upgrade to the premium service for automatic cleaning.

Hotmail blocks a plethora of file types as attachments; if you receive an unauthorized format, you won’t be able to download it. Hotmail doesn’t scan zipped files; however, so forbidden file formats can be hidden in compressed attachments.

Google takes, perhaps, the most hard-lined approach: It won’t let messages through to your Gmail account if they have attachments that contain the .EXE file extension. Gmail blocks those messages, including any with EXE files in a compressed file. If anyone sends executable files to your account, Gmail bounces the message back to the sender.

  Spam Management

Gmail’s approach to spam management is similar to the SpamBayes utility. The more messages you mark as spam, the better Gmail gets at weeding out those types of messages before you see them. Essentially, you must train Gmail to recognize spam; if unwanted messages make it to your Inbox, select the checkbox next to the message and click Report Spam. It’s a good idea to check the Spam folder once in awhile to make sure the system is working properly. If Gmail erroneously identifies a message as spam, you can select the message’s checkbox and click the Not Spam button or add the sender to your Contacts list and that should take care of it.

Yahoo! Mail uses SpamGuard filtering that sends unsolicited emails to a Bulk Mail folder. As with Gmail, you should check the reject folder periodically to ensure that it is indeed capturing spam and not important messages you need. Yahoo! Mail also uses DomainKeys, a cryptographic email authentication program designed to combat email spoofing (where spammers co-opt a name you know in the From: field) and the resulting phishing attempts. (This occurs when information on a Web site attempts to trick you into revealing confidential information.)

Hotmail uses a junk mail filter to keep spam at bay, but you specify how restrictive you want the filter to be. Microsoft recommends using this filter in combination with Hotmail’s Safe List filter, which keeps track of senders you deem “safe” and directs their messages to your inbox.

  POP Capability

Yahoo! Mail (and the paid version of Hotmail) can download messages from any POP account into the Web-based inbox. That makes it easy to check another account, such as your standard ISP account, while you are on the road.

Gmail, at least as of this writing, lets you check your Web mail from a POP client, such as Outlook or Eudora. Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail also offer this capability to paid subscribers. Gmail works particularly well in this respect if you choose to configure the POP capability. Send an email using Gmail, and it will show up in your Outlook folder as if you had sent the message using Outlook.

  Who Wins The Battle?

These wouldn’t be free services if they didn’t have advertising, so there’s not a lot to differentiate between the three. Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail pointedly say they don’t invade your privacy with their banner ads, unlike Gmail, which offers ads based on the content of your email message. This sounds a lot more ominous than it is; Gmail uses a completely automated process to target ads, and no human being reads the content of your messages.

Although Hotmail may currently be the best-known free email provider, Yahoo! Mail and Gmail offer better services. In the end, however, which Web-based email service you choose depends on your needs and preferences.

by Anne Steyer Phelps