[Techtalk] importing mail from Yahoo

[Cynthia Kiser]

Quoting Laura Fields <laurajfields at gmail.com>:
> I recently had the same problem.  As Christine pointed out, you have to pay
> Yahoo to get POP access, but Gmail recently added a free import feature that
> will go and retrieve your mail from yahoo.  Once it's in gmail you can use
> Thunderbird or any other client to store it locally (or you can just use
> Gmail).
> 
>  It worked great for me -- retrieved thousands of messages in within a few
> hours with basically no effort from me.  Within Gmail, you just go to
> settings (top right of page) and then choose "accounts and import" and
> follow the instructions.

Oh my. That is great for the consumer. But it does make me feel like
Google is out to crush Yahoo! I don't pay a lot of attention to Yahoo
(actually none at all until a friend of mine started to work for
them). But this does make me start wondering if I need to take more
seriously those who are warning about online monoculture/monopolies.

Anyone know what the economics of "free email" are? Are either Yahoo!
or Google making enough on ads to pay for all the infrastructure for
their mail services?