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The Search Race
Communications
Communications is the most versatile category, with many features. All three companies provide Email, instant messaging programs, groups, and a blog tool. Yahoo! and MSN both offer an in-browser chat, while Yahoo! and Google offer design-it-yourself web pages. Yahoo! is alone in offering a photo upload site, Flickr, and message boards, while Google is the only company to provide a blog-only search tool. These tools are all designed to keep you connected to friends (and strangers) online. You can send plain-ol' email, update your life on your blog, talk without needing a phone, and check on all the other people online that you do and don't know with a small amount of typing and a few mouse clicks. Again, each of the variations of any of the listed tools is slightly different between competitors. For example, Google's Email service Gmail lets you keep almost 3GB of email and attachments, while MSN's Hotmail only lets you store 250 MB. Yahoo! leads the instant messenger race with Voice, allowing users to treat Yahoo! Messenger as a phone, but Gmail will let you store your Google Talk chats as part of your Gmail storage space.
Instant Messaging programs:
messenger.msn.com,
messenger.yahoo.com,
talk.google.com
Email services:
www.hotmail.com,
mail.yahoo.com,
www.gmail.com (Gmail is still Beta,
and requires you to sign up using a mobile device, or to get an invite from someone who already uses it)
Blog your life away:
360.yahoo.com,
www.blogger.com,
join.msn.com/spaces |
