Computer and Library Learning (Archived)

Gmail has been using text-only advertisements with questionable success at matching advertisements to Gmail users’ interests. Gmail is moving to play catch-up to allow image advertisements similar to Hotmail and Yahoo Mail (these two also allow animated advertisements). Yahoo is attempting to attract more advertisers to compete with Google in this regard as email users tend to log in frequently and often use other services offered by the email providers.

Also similar to Gmail is increased storage space. Gmail provides over 7.5 GB of space while Yahoo Mail is promising “never-ending” storage. Yahoo Mail’s market share has been slowly declining while Gmail’s share has been increasing steadily up to about 220 million. Hotmail remains the leader in cloud email services with 327 million users but dropped 8 per cent from 2010 to 2011.

Yahoo Mail users will be able to chat with Facebook, Windows Live and Yahoo Messenger within their email account. Yahoo Mail will support various apps that allow users to organize their inbox, including All My Purchases (to track online orders), Unsubscriber (to remove names from e-newsletters), YouSendIt (to attach big files to messages), PayPal and eBay.

Users of Yahoo Mail will be able to look at slideshows and videos connected to links within email messages. Contacts will be prioritized to list unread messages from contacts at the top in a manner similar to Gmail’s Priority Inbox.