Yahoo Mail, available in 15 languages in almost two dozen countries around the world, gives users 2 gigabytes of storage for $20 a year.

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) offers 250 megabytes of storage to users of its free MSN Hotmail accounts. Like Yahoo, it offers 2 gigabytes of storage for an annual fee of $20.

Now it seems that Google is going to raise the bar to 2GB on their free service shortly, with promises to raise it again in the future as they need to. I have a feeling that their mail storage requirements pale in comparison to their search database, so adding more email storage shouldn’t be a big deal.

Odd results on checking my storage… First I find out that I’m using 119 MB (11%) of my 1079 MB quota…. then I check later and find that I’m using the same amount of my 1085 MB quota. Now it’s 1094. Now 1094… Are they slowly growing my quota 100K per minute, or is this something else happening?

Update: On the morning of April 1, I see “You are currently using 118 MB (8%) of your 1478 MB.” Appparently they’re increasing quotas slowly, after all.