Internet media company Yahoo Inc. launched its free e-mail service in 1997 with four megabytes of storage and now says it will remove storage limits on its free web-based e-mail service beginning in May.

Yahoo will not remove the current one-gigabyte cap on its webmail all at once, John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo Mail, said in a written statement Tuesday.

"As much as we'd like to just flip a switch and 'unlimit' everyone on the same day, we'll be rolling this out over a few months to facilitate a smooth transition," he said.

The latest barrage in the battle for users will give Yahoo's ad-supported service the greatest storage capacity among webmail offerings.

Lycos Inc. gives users three gigabytes of storage and Google Inc.'s Gmail offers about 2.8 GB. Microsoft Corp. grants two gigabytes of space on its Windows Live Mail while its Hotmail offering gives users one gigabyte.

Source:Xinhua/Agencies