The update will hit Yahoo's 277 million free email users, and promises to be "faster, safer, easier to use, and offers a seamless experience across PC, mobile and tablet devices."
Furthermore, the company says it will offer unlimited storage. Rival Gmail offers 7.6GB, which is the most of the free offerings, currently.
Hotmail/Live has the biggest share of the market, at 327 million users, followed by Yahoo and Gmail at 220 million users. Gmail and Yahoo, however, have been chipping away at Hotmail for years now.
Says Blake Irving, Yahoo chief product officer:
Yahoo's vision for online communications brings together all the tools that people use to connect -- e-mail, chat, SMS, and social updates -- and makes it easier for them to share content and engage in conversations with the people that matter most to them.We're delivering on this strategy with the latest version of Yahoo Mail, providing our hundreds of millions of users worldwide with a fun, engaging and constantly connected experience across desktop, mobile and tablet devices that keeps the conversation going -- anytime, anywhere.
The updated Yahoo Mail will add social networking capabilities like responding to messages from Facebook and sharing updates via Twitter, Zynga and FB from within the service.
Just like Google's "Priority" box, yahoo will add message and contact prioritization.
Yahoo Mail will also add chat for Windows Live and Yahoo Messenger within the service, themes and stationary options, Yahoo apps, YouSendIt-integration, online order tracking, an Unsubscriber app, and new SpamGuard tech that should further decrease spam by up to 60 percent.
Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 24 May 2011 15:14
