Lycos offers 1GB email service

Lycos has increased the storage limit of its email service to 1GB in a bid to usurp its rivals Google and Yahoo. Both Google and Yahoo have recently unveiled plans to launch similar high storage email services, but details have remained sketchy. Lycos Mail Personal 1GB is ad free, offers anti-spam and anti-virus software and a free SMS service for £3.49 per month. According to Lycos, the service will not be using spyware and users' privacy is promised as it "will not be building up user profiles or storing deleted emails". Alex Kovach, vice president of Lycos Europe, said: "We are delighted to be the first to offer our Lycos email customers and internet users a 1GB service. We will be interested to see when our competitors can offer the service that we already provide with a sustainable business model to underpin it.” Last month, Google announced the trial of a free 1GB email service called Gmail, which displays text adverts alongside emails that are relevant to keywords in the user's emails. Earlier this week, Yahoo revealed plans to raise the storage limit given to its free email users to 100MB and offer premium subscribers "virtually unlimited" capacity.