Lycos announced Tuesday that it is upgrading its service in the United Kingdom to give consumers 1GB of e-mail storage. But unlike some rival services being developed, the Lycos service is not free. Users will have to pay a monthly fee of 3.40 pounds ($6.01).
The company said it plans eventually to make the service available more broadly in Europe.
Google caused considerable excitement last month when it announced that it was developing a free service called Gmail and that it would give all users of this service 1GB of storage space--far more than the 2MB offered by MSN's Hotmail, for example. But the plans also alarmed some people, because Google said it intends to scan e-mail messages for keywords and insert targeted advertisements into the messages.
Last week, Yahoo jumped into the fray, revealing it would provide users with 100MB of free e-mail space and "virtually unlimited space" for paying customers.
Lycos' new service is already available. In a somewhat labored swipe at Google and Yahoo, Lycos was keen to point out that this makes it the first major e-mail specialist to offer a 1GB service. Google's Gmail is still in a test phase. Additionally, Spymac, a Web-hosting company for Macintosh aficionados, has announced a free 1GB service, but it is much less well-known.
"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. But size is not all that matters," said Alex Kovach, Lycos's European vice president.
Graeme Wearden of ZDNet UK reported from London.
