Yahoo Mail Beta -finally! Initial impressions

Posted by Conor O'Neill on Friday, March 31, 2006

Months after I signed up, I finally got access to the new Yahoo Mail Beta programme. I’ve been using Yahoo mail as my “we are a web-site, give us an email address” address for over ten years now. In that time, I don’t think it has really improved one iota in usability apart from the addition of spam catching. It has always been slow, clunky and riddled with obnoxious massive ads.

The new one is a major improvement on the usability front. Full ajaxian interface with drag n drop and reasonably speedy 3-pane display. So far I like it a hell of a lot but there is no way it is ousting GMail as my favourite email system. There are far too many “please wait” messages for my liking. And the screen real estate just does not seem to be used efficiently.

But the number one problem is the continued presence of those horrible huge flashy animated ads. Let me make this clear Mr Yahoo: In ten years of using Yahoo mail, I have never, ever, clicked on one of those ads. If I suffered from epilepsy, I am pretty sure they would trigger an attack, they are so visually offensive. In a much shorter period of time, I have clicked on many Google Adsense ads. The are unobtrusive, relevant and don’t take up half the screen. If you want to beat Google, do some simple end-user surveys and see if anyone on the planet likes your current ads.

But if Yahoo mail is your primary web-mail system, you are going to love the new one.

[tags]Yahoo, Mail, Beta[/tags]


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