The new Yahoo Mail interface went into public beta in September 2006, although Yahoo was testing it long before that. Tonight Yahoo takes the “beta” label off of the product and makes it the default interface for all new Yahoo mail accounts.
Yahoo mail already has an integrated RSS reader and instant messaging. They also recently announced unlimited storage for all mail users.
They are also releasing a few new features.
Shortcuts: Mail now has a number of intelligent shortcuts. Things like addresses, places, dates, contact information, etc. are underlined with blue dots. Click on the link and see a mashup with maps (for addresses), travel guides (for places), calendar (for dates), etc. New services are being added regularly.
SMS/Text Messaging: Yahoo wants you to use their mail application whenever you contact your friends, however you contact them. In addition to emailing or instant messaging clients, you can now send them a text message from the mail interface. Their responses also come in directly to Yahoo Mail. It currently works for U.S., India, Philippines and Canadian mobile numbers.
Is Yahoo Mail a better webmail application than GMail? In our comparisons GMail always comes out on top, although the main reason is tagging of messages and the fact that GMail gives free forwarding and POP access to the account. Yahoo still charges $20/year for forwarding or POP access. For users who still like their desktop mail clients, POP access is an important feature. Yahoo says they are considering making it a free option, but they have a lot of paying mail customers. If they make too many features free, they jeopardize that revenue stream. Offering unlimited free storage really pushed the limits, so I don’t expect them to move more features from paid to free any time soon.
The new interface is the final realization of Yahoo’s 2004 acquisition of Ajax pioneer Oddpost. The new mail product is based largely on ideas first launched by Oddpost in 2002.
Startups aren’t just sitting around as the big guys upgrade their webmail apps, though. Our favorite product in this space is Orgoo, which launches this fall and lets users pull in mail and IM accounts from any number of providers. Foldera is another promising product in this space (I was previously on their board of directors, but I do not own any stock in the company).
At the end of the day, without POP access then all the features in the world won’t really help Yahoo overcome the enterprise hurdle. While this is a great step forward for them, and it shows that Jerry might actually be trying to take the company into the “future” as it were, they need to decide what is more important to them at this point — quick cash or relevance.
I guess it’s the same problems that Web X.0 products face. They want to find a way to turn a quick buck, but then they forget that if you leave out a common feature just to monetize it the public response will be to just not use your product.
My two cents.
1000% better than gmail.
How come everyone is talking of peripheral features while the performance of the web-app itself is horrendous. A month back I turned off the new interface and went back to the old one. I run Gmail and Yahoo side-by-side and I think it’s time to switch completely to Gmail. My two biggest issues with Yahoo (and Hotmail for that matter): Spam and performance.
wow
this better than gmail really
gr8 work yahoo!
Is it just me, or do others find the search function in the standard Yahoo web email, doesn’t actually work?
Gmail is hardly the best. I’d say that all webmail apps really do suck overall. I’d say that Yahoo is probably #1, Gmail and Live Hotmail are tied for #2. Inbox.com actually isn’t half bad too (and they offer 5GB of storage for free).
I got in early and loved the RSS reader. I now find that the reader gets stuck and then marks all of my feeds as new.
The chat function is blocked where I work and Yahoo makes it easy for SYSAdmins to configure blocking chat.
Overall I think Yahoo is nice, but still #2 to Google.
BeachBum
Out of beta? That is amazing! Y! Mail is still quite buggy and problematic. I’m on a fast cable modem connection and regularly get errors when I jump/scroll through messages too fast. This really makes using Y! Mail a *major* pain! It happens to me 20+ times a day.
Put that beta label back…. or, better, please fix this error – I’m paying for your email service, Y!
Said it before, I’ll say it again: EMAIL IS DEAD! Email is for old people.
Gah…my Gmail account is a toxic dump of Amazon.com receipts, horny day trading spam and notes from my 80 year old parents who are amazing they don’t have to use a rotary phone any longer. I’m not bagging on the post…and actually, it good to see Yahoo follow through and pull this pig out of Beta.
*sigh*
Ah well…I guess there needs to be a thinning of the herd before we get beyond all the hippies and yuppies and let Email die the death it needs to.
Die email, die.
Without conversation view, Yahoo! Mail will fade out just like AOL Mail.
YAY! I have already opened an account with Safe-Mail.net It beats all the others to the ground!
i am comeing eary is for you to give me cpanel
Six obvious spams in my Yahoo inbox in the past 24 hours. Compared to Gmail, Yahoo’s filtering is a joke. Big congrats to them on erasing the word “Beta” though…
“Sorry, Yahoo! Mail Beta does not support your browser.
You can either download a compatible browser or proceed to the original Yahoo! Mail.”
Enough said. Yahoo can’t even support Safari and they claim this isn’t a beta product anymore. Unlimited storage or not, Gmail stills beats them in compatibility, free pop3, and not to mention Google doesn’t attach ads to every outgoing e-mail like Yahoo does. It’s time for Yahoo to get out of the 90’s and join the Web 2.0 era.
they all suck compared to inbox.com, the hidden gem in the webmail space.
1 Steve
2 Scott
You are absolutely right. Yahoo mail app itself is bad (the new version). It is too slow when you have many e-mails in Inbox folder. Its advertisement side bar is horrendous. No tags (simple feature Yahoo cannot add), No POP3 support (One thing Yahoo can do to change the whole e-mail game) and worst support for Safari and Camino. E-mail apps are the hottest topic on TC. I still think, AOL’s new mail INTERFACE is much better (if not the app itself). Its much much faster.
Gmail is a different world. Those who like it will like it and those who hate won’t ever touch it. I use Gmail, Yahoo and AOL. I like AOL the most and the greatest reason is the IMAP support, which to my mind is better than POP3. Spam control is awesome.
Come guys at Yahoo, you can do much better than this.
I had yahoo email last year — before and during the early days of the beta release. I sat down to login that day last year — the day of the beta release — and my email didn’t work. It never worked again — until I called customer support — and that is when they told me about the beta release……
So I canx yahoo and never looked back — until today — It sure would have been nice to tell your customers Yahoo…..nothing like jamming betas down your paying customers throats…..
no — I’m not bitter….really…..
@Keith
You may think email is for ‘ old ‘ people but you need to get a grip. 90% of real world business depend on email. Not everone in the business world spends their time banging out text messages. That’s for all you ‘ whippersnappers” to use when you’re trying to get laid.
Another problem with Yahoo mail is the capability to view attachments. Especially now that I can view my powerpoint files directly inside gmail.
I think that Google is doing the right thing here, integrating its email capabilities with Google Apps.
I have a Gmail account, regular Yahoo account and a Business Yahoo Account. I prefer the Yahoo accounts much more than the Gmail accounts. Maybe I’m old school, but I much prefer the folder structure vs. the tagging feature. I find the Gmail interface extremely busy and overloaded. As for spam, I hardly use my Gmail account and yet I have thousands of spam emails. Not to say that Yahoo is perfect, but I think their email is much better than Gmail, especially on the business/professional end.
Now calendars… Yahoo’s just plain sux.
Yahoo has seen better days, that’s for sure. Yahoo Mail is not worthy of coming out of beta, as it’s extremely slow and doesn’t always display my messages in the preview pane when using Firefox. I’ve always thought the RSS reader was slow and clunky. Yahoo Contacts is still a confusing mess, since the new interface is missing some fields the old interface had, resulting in some information I entered for contacts not to appear in the new interface and also preventing me from updating that information without visiting the old, ugly site. As for Calendar, HEH, what a joke. Has Yahoo even been trying to update their Calendar app? Why not just shut it down since there are far better solutions out there now.
One thing I do see coming though iare feature rich, private email. Spam is costing companies millions every year. I know of a couple about ready to launch. Time will tell.
Yahoo is better for me because:
1. The Yahoo Mail interface is familiar. Conversation view in GMail gets confusing when arranging plans with multiple people.
2. When I send from another account through Yahoo it actually looks like it came from that account. Unless GMail has changed this in the last several months, it still shows the GMail account in the header information with a nice little phrase like “sent for jimsmith@jimsmith.com“.
3. The calendar events along the bottom of the page is handy
I like the way GMail is integrating their other apps and I think they’ve got a good thing, but Yahoo wins for me!
One great feature in GMail’s POP/SMTP Mail is that, when you send outbound mail via SMTP, it gets saved in your Sent Mail online. Also, when you download it via POP, it archives it for you.
With Yahoo (and any other POP mail I’ve seen), you could leave it on the server when you download it, but you can’t have SMTP Sent Mail automatically save in your account online.
GMail makes POP a little more IMAPish with that Sent Mail feature. Almost entirely for that reason alone, I prefer Gmail.
Old Yahoo interface, fast. New interface, slow. Ugh. I have spoken.
Reasons why I use Gmail:
1. My Jabber address is the same as my e-mail (Gtalk = XMPP)
2. Gmail is faster than Yahoo
3. Free POP3 access
4. Spam filter
For those saying “email is dead”
*insert flame here*
Without question Gmail is the nicer user experience: fast, clean, pretty bugless, and (not least) only text advertising. Tagging is an acquired taste. Make the effort and you (probably) won’t want to go back.
Gmail’s problem lies with conversation view: great for one-to-one messaging, but really confusing when multiple people get involved. They need to give the option of “unclustering” messages.
Out of beta so soon?? I am used to the Google’s definition of beta..would have expected atleast 3-4 years more…
Google Will you be able to stop the duo Yahoo + MSN?
For me, free SMTP is *the* killer feature… there are only very few RELIABLE services left that offer it for free… see the *small* list at http://www.iopu...bestpopsmtp.htm and the *long* list of “dead” providers on the same page.
I am using the old Yahoo email for over 10 years, and I keep all my important emails and web presence there. WHen rumors of Gmail came out a few years ago I went nuts trying to get someone to invite me to the beta (remember when it was “by invitation only”?). First I loved it, all that free storage and the cool new concept of tagging, compares to the cumbersome, inflexible, page-refreshing Yahoo mail.
But when I got the invitation to the new Yahoo Mail Beta, it took me 3 days to circle back to Yahoo. Gmail is downright inferior to the new Yahoo.
Yahoo email is all I need, with drag-and-drop, easy management of folders, easy structured search within the emails (like “ibm contract from:jim”), built-in RSS reader, integrated calendar, tasks and what not.
Only after I reverted to Yahoo I relized that Gmail was actually trying to teach me that “tags are better than folders” and trying to get me to used to a new email experience, counter to all the previous email experience I knew before. Well, who needs it? why should I change the way I do things if it really works for me?
And a couple of words about the POP and forwarding for pay –
1. People, this is $20 a year, what’s the big deal?
2. Most people don’t really need it, because they already do the majority of emailing on the web
3. People who do use POP and forwardng need it to get Emails on their mobile phone (unless they are poor suckers with Blackberries). Well – no more! I just installed Yahoo Go on my Windows Mobile phone (Moto-Q), and it gets me all my email in a simple way, no need to POP on the Yahoo back-end account…
Disclaimer – I don’t work for Yahoo nor hold any Yahoo stock… I just appreciate a good thing when I see it.
I can’t wait for my AOL mail to look exactly like this.
Too many adds, too slow. Astoundingly horrible when i try to sort by name. no POP or forwarding. I’m not in love with Gmail bc I find the threaded messages difficult to use(and often just wrong, like when I get emails from may different people with the same subject), but Yahoo is still inferior.
@#29 – $20 a year is a big deal when another email provider offers the same service for FREE. It really becomes a big deal if you need POP for multiple email addresses. $20 a year suddenly becomes $40 or $60.
I use gmail, it suits my personal requirements but for our company (which uses gmail in form of google apps for domains) it has big problems with attachments. Its lack of antivirus -I guess- causes it to prevent attaching .exe or .zip files (containing exe files) to emails. After all, new yahoo mail is designed for 1024×728 and above resolutions (it warns user about it while logging in). I think it may prevent a considerable percentage of users (including myself) from using it properly!
“Yahoo still charges $20/year for forwarding or POP access.”
Um, maybe it’s just us folk over at Yahoo! UK & Ireland; but I managed to enable pop access to my Yahoo! account the other day for free.
I dont like the new Yahoo! Mail beta anyway; purely because when using it on Opera, it’s a slow, clunky and unpleasant experience – riddled with ads, too. Bah!
Still, I wont be switching to GMail – I’m just gonna stick with the standard Yahoo! Mail for as long as possible.
One really needs to ask this
WTF took them so long??
BTW Michael, its been too long since you wrote about facebook, almost 3 posts!
Michael, you missed two other really big features that went out with this latest release: 1) search refinements and 2) Safari 3 support.
http://www.flic...ned/1251373301/
and
http://www.flic...ned/1252233248/
Hopefully seeing it running in Safari 3 will shut up some of the “haters” that have been harping on Safari support for so long. Actually, now that I’ve used it in Safari, I have to say…the speed is impressive.
Am also a yahoo MailPlus user and feel neglected!
Have been reporting REGULARLY to tech support that the “To” column in the Inbox should read the original Addressee, instead of myname@yahoo.com for everything from directly addressed mail to forwards. And NEVER a reply or response… just a “duh” reaction when I have found someone to talk to at Yahoo.
Still the interface is somewhat more pleasurable than GMail… I use both!
Hurry up, Yahoo… you should not be out of Beta with a basic like this unfixed!
It is simply NOT TRUE that Yahoo mail has gone out of beta. The beta is label is still there — at least in my case.
Anyway, I am giving it a chance again — for the 4th time in the last few months. I have tried it for 3 rounds, and every time I shifted back to the old version, cos I wasn’t impressed at all.
True, there are lots of fancy functionalities, but the core stuff are not robust — most importantly, it was slower than the original Yahoo mail, in all sense.
I am giving it a try again, hope it delivers this time.
Well, im using both yahoomail and gmail.
Where and when can I use this out-of-beta version?
Yahoo mail is WAY too slow. All too often most of the graphics never even load at all. I can’t believe it is out of beta what with all the bugs. What do they use, AMD K6 processors? Please speed it up. It is insufferable the way it is now.
Use them both. Like them both. As an advertiser I was in on the very first round of Gmail invites and got several great account IDs I’ve always wanted. Yet I still use my Yahoo account more for my primary personal email. I’ve been a big fan of the new version ever since it was launched in beta.
1. To the self proclaimed genius who feels that email is going to die: Let me know how that plan works out for ya in about 5 years. That snail mail thing has totally disappeared too, right?
2. Gmail’s spam filter is abysmal.
3. Gmail’s labels annoy me to no end.
4. Inbox.com is underrated.
5. I have high hopes for Orgoo…we shall see.
John V,
You have to use the search on the Left hand side above the folders’ view. Not the right hand side,which is the normal Yahoo search, I have been confused so many times !!
You can send SMS from the new Yahoo email? I guess I’m missing it? Do you mean IM sent from the web to the mobile?
Gmail, any day is a far better email solution that yahoo mail or msn. it is fast, intuitive, and sensible.
new interface is still too slow.
the rss reader is horrible compared to google reader
old interface works just fine for me.
Well, I had free POP access until today. Without it, Yahoo! Mail is useless to me. Thanks for the ride, while it lasted.
Shame I have to tell everyone yet another new email address!!
nrrd phone number and heres my number 100%single
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