Yahoo has announced in a statement on its China site, that it will increase the storage limit of its free e-mail service tenfold in China, even though it does not appear that users elsewhere will see the same benefit anytime soon.

The company said it has boosted the storage capacity for its free mail service from 100MB to 1GB, matching the storage of rival Google's upcoming Gmail offering. In contrast to Gmail's trials, which are confined to a select group, Yahoo's upgrade will be extended to all existing and new users of its mail service in China. However, subscribers must first log on to Yahoo's instant messenger service and add other users to their contact lists to qualify for the 1GB of storage.

A representative of Yahoo Southeast Asia said there are "no immediate plans" to offer a similar upgrade to users in other countries. Connecting to Yahoo's email page from the United States on overnight shows the company still sticking with 100MB of free storage in other parts of the world.