Lycos Europe today unveiled a 1GB email service and cocked a snook at US rivals Yahoo! and Google. According to the PR guff, the Lycos email service will be free of ads and comes protected by anti-spam and anti-virus software. The service costs £3.49 ($6.17) per month.

Both Google and Yahoo! have already announced plans for similar beefed-up email services however details of both are still a little vague.

Said Alex Kovach, Lycos European VP: "We are delighted to be the first to offer our Lycos email customers and Internet users a 1GB service. We will be interested to see when our competitors can offer the service that we already provide with a sustainable business model to underpin it."

The portal business said that the launch of its 1GB mail service was part of a "new strategic direction in the market to expand its Web hosting and registering services and email provision". Which is nice. ®

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