They didn't take over immediately (it's a pain to change email addresses, the lock-in is pretty high), but they did force nearly immediate changes from the majo

They didn't take over immediately (it's a pain to change email addresses, the lock-in is pretty high), but they did force nearly immediate changes from the major players. Hotmail at the time was offering only a few megabytes of storage (!) while Yahoo! was offering 6MB. Within months both providers greatly increased their storage, though not immediately to the level of Gmail, to help retain users.