11/16 A while ago, some Yahoo! employee asked what was wrong with
Yahoo mail that people would use gmail instead. These are
my reasons:
1. No POP3/IMAP access to keep your mail local. Gmail at
least gives you SPOP.
2. No forwarding or filter rules that let you forward
3. Because of 1 and 2, I feel like Yahoo is locking me in.
4. Avatars? Seriously, do you really think I care about that?
5. Ads everywhere. I know you need to profit from email but
it's just too much.
5. "Do you Yahoo!?" at the bottom of my emails. It's not
professional to send prospective employers/business
partners emails with ads.
6. Re: #5, <myname><some long number>@yahoo.com doesn't
sound professional. <myname>@gmail.com does. Too many
email squatters on yahoo.
\_ I don't think that's really Yahoo's fault.
\_ It may not be, but it is still a reason to use gmail
\_ The unprofessional "yahoo.com" could at least be
changed to http://ymail.com or something else. But
yahoo makes it way too easy for spammers and
squatters to get an account. Google at least
makes you associate a new account with another
one or your cell phone number.
\_ I have evidence that yahoo mail has been infiltrated by
the Church of Scientology.
7. My browser isn't open all the time. Gmail has a notifier.
Where's Yahoo!'s?
\_ Not to defend Yahoo!, but YMessenger does that.
8. Folders are dead. Smart folders or tags are in. You can't
Venn diagram with folders.
9. Like #1 and 2, Y! calendar doesn't allow linking to or
publishing of ICAL/XML calendars. Manually uploading a
file every time doesn't count.
10. My Yahoo! friends use gmail. That tells you how much
they like their own company's product.
Or perhaps you could elaborate on why one would prefer Y!
mail over gmail.
\_ This is a free market. No one is forcing you to use Yahoo mail.
Hate ads? Look at Google, they put ads everywhere, how is that
less annoying than Yahoo?. Besides have you even tried Yahoo
mail's latest experimental ajax interface?
\_ You're right. It is a free market and I'm practicing
that free market. Someone from Y! asked why people
hated Y! mail so much and I'm saying why. BTW, google
has a simple text banner for ads. Y! has it everywhere.
One animated banner ad, another ad cluster, and ads
in my email ("Do you Yahoo!?").
\_ Yep. I'm not that surprised Yahoo employees don't "get it".
If they did the product would be better. I think you're
wasting your time.
\_ I don't think Yahoo is alone here in terms of "not
getting it". Microsoft, in its attempt to develop
the ultimate iPod killer, can't even succeed
in beating out Sandisk despite their deep pockets and
marketing muscle. They think people want useless
features like squirts and FM tuners or complicated
music stores. In the end, it's just smoke and mirrors.
And grunge? Really. Grunge was like so 1992. Telling
your customers that you're cool doesn't make you cool.
\_ I've tried the new thing. Still has more ads and more intrusive
ones, plus it has an "ms outlook" interface. Gmails tags are
better IMO. The new yahoo mail interface is nicer for sure.
\_ I think Yahoo just doesn't focus on their older net properties the
way Google does. They're doing many many many more things but don't
do really well at most of them. As Google's product list grows you
may find less effort applied to their older and less sexy products
as well. But since everything but the front door is beta anyway
you'd have no business complaining, right? ;-)
\- just to add in passing: it's one thing when you do something
before somebody else [yahoo before gmail] and they end up doing
it better, but it's another thing when you have a reasonable
product and you replace it with something obviously lamer
[yahoo old to new tc browser]. there are mistakes you make an
[yahoo old to new TV browser]. there are mistakes you make an
learn from, and then there are mistakes that shouldnt have
been made. it may have been a reasonable business decision
for yahoo to acknowledge some of the above Ymail problems
and decide it isnt worth the $$$ investment to fix some of
them, but if in even on public discussions they cant acknowledge
what is a problem [e.g. claim people want some unique feature
they have and the competeition doesnt when in reality nobody
cares about that ... and they dont acknowledge they are lacking
something everybody wants] that's a serious problem. i think
breaking the working tv application suggests a potentially
breaking the working TV application suggests a potentially
serious problem ... when an org makes "mistakes that shouldnt
have been made" often rather than leaning something in the
technical domain ["we used the wrong data structure"], you
learn something about the organization. |
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