Yahoo Mail turns 16, gets a makeover | Hacker News Reader

Yahoo Mail turns 16, gets a makeover

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72 pointsscsper61 comments

One thing that bothers me about their android app is that they trick users into clicking ads. What I mean is that when you open the inbox, you'll see an unread message at the top of the list but when you go to tap on it, an ad has already slid into place shifting the entire list of emails down leading people to tap on the ad instead. What's even more scummy about this is that the behavior isn't consistent so sometimes an ad will be in the top of the list, sometimes it won't so the user doesn't know if to wait for the ad to load or not.

I don't mind seeing ads in my free products, I just don't like being tricked into clicking an ad.

gmail is doing that too

On the Android Mobile client? I never experienced that. Where can I see this behavior?

This is in the latest Gmail update.

However in Gmail I feel like I'm less likely to accidentally open one of the ads.

Is this on the Gmail web interface or on the Android app? I remember ads in the web interface that are placed above the message list for a while now, but putting them in the app where screen space is scarce would be an awful experience. If that happens I'm switching to Fastmail. Incidentally, does anyone know if Fastmail lets you pay for several years in advance?

I've noticed this issue with quite a few mobile games as well.

After the loading screen has ended and the "Tap anywhere to play" screen appears, right as you get ready to tap the screen, an ad will slide in covering the screen and handle the tap. Scummy indeed.

People improve what they measure. If the measure is "revenue derived from PPC ads," then they'll evolve interfaces to make clicking ads unavoidable.

Yes, but some companies measure building long term brand and trust against trying to squeeze a few extra points out of PPC by making people feel tricked.

Apparently not the companies making games like Turbo Turd Launcher 5.

I switched over to outlook.com recently. The UI is far superior to Google's in a lot of ways, the ads are less in your face, and with the recent NSA revelations I'm not really too concerned if the NSA is getting my data from Microsoft rather than from Google.

The new Yahoo UI looks nice, and I'm really interested in seeing more competition among the big three. Google has been navel-gazing with the gmail UI for too long, really.

I recently moved my personal domain email to be handled by Outlook (since Google no longer has Apps for your Domain) and have been really happy so far. I don't know why I'm bothered by the ad bar in either Yahoo Mail or Outlook since Gmail has it too. Likely because Gmail's blends in much better to the interface?

The multiple smart inboxes in Gmail is a killer feature for me thoug

The biggest flaw in Outlook.com is the junk filter. You can explicitly mark domains and address as trusted yet it will still disable messages and flag them incorrectly as spam.

> since Google no longer has Apps for your Domain

should probably read as "since Google no longer has free Apps for your Domain"

Uh? I'm still using the free plan... Did I miss something?

You're grandfathered in.

As in this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause

Does anyone know if they have plans to shut it down?

No, they're just not offering new ones. You should be fine.

Thanks.

This discussion prompted me to back up that account locally, just in case... It was long overdue, anyway.

Yes you are absolutely correct, my mistake.

When I visited the article I immediately thought I was looking at a screenshot of Gmail, until I noticed the ugly Yahoo banner ad on the right.

I guess Gmail is succesful and popular enough that copying them makes a lot of sense.

True, came in to say something similar. It looks a lot like GMail[1]. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing.

[1] http://media.tumblr.com/841e692e2c1bdf45eb0c3167146bd142/tum...

It is a bad thing because consumers are so used to that interface and either designers just can't come up with a better one or they don't want to come up with a new one.

"we’re giving you a monstrous amount of storage, 1TB (that’s 1,000 GBs), so you have ample space for all your emails and attachments."

I thought Yahoo Mail didn't limit storage - they advertised it as "unlimited storage" a few years ago.

- terms and conditions apply, no abuse allowed

Everyone has "unlimited" storage. I guess "1TB" sounds better.

I'm surprised they still apparently have the big banner ad on the right-hand side. I know they have to make money somehow, but it really detracts from an otherwise pretty good-looking design.

Yesterday I saw someone using the previous version of Yahoo mail, and that banner ad had a strobe effect on the border that was constantly flashing. I'm amazed people put up with this -- I guess people have probably developed pretty strong ad blindness (hence the strobe ads).

If I ran a web mail company, I would not want to be part of the arms race of user ad blindness vs. more aggressive ads. As a user I'd take google's textual, potentially relevant ads over this any day. (No, I do not care if google "reads" my email. http://www.maxmasnick.com/2012/02/12/gmail_paranoia/)

Yahoo + Adblock + customized ad opt-out and you never see any ads, and you don't have google reading your mail.

and you have Yahoo 'reading your mail'. So?

Ads are an inconvenience, surveillance isn't.

Yahoo doesn't scan your mail if you opt out of the customized advertising.

Wow, conversations! They're introducing threads almost a decade after Gmail. I remember when I first made the switch from FastMail and Yahoo to Gmail. Gmail conversations were jarring even though I was somewhat used to threads from newsgroups, but after a few days I never looked back.

It's 2013 and still no IMAP access in Yahoo Mail. Heck, it's only been around for 27 years.

You can use IMAP from smartphones, and from Apple Mail. How to, per Wikipedia:

> Mac OS X users can directly set up an IMAP account in Apple Mail 4.4. After entering a full name, email address, and password, hold down the Option key. The Create button will change to Continue, allowing one to manually configure the account settings.

> Apple Mail 5.0 included with Mac OS X Lion supports easy and direct IMAP account setup.

Well gee, what about the other email clients? Not everyone uses Apple Mail.

The claim was Yahoo had "no" IMAP access. That's incorrect.

And, for the record, if you want it in Windows, just configure it. That it's not "supported" doesn't mean you can't use it.

Yahoo! Mail; now with Gmail inside.

Looks like Gmail with a different background image.

What used to be Y! Plus (19.99) is now Y! Ad-free (49.99). Nice increase for less since they've made all other features available to freeriders as well.

Addendum: Y! Plus subscribers will be grandfathered into the 19.99 plan.

I was shocked when I saw the ad free version priced at $49.99 for new subscribers!

And Yahoo still doesn't have IMAP access (while Gmail has had it for free).

You can use IMAP from smartphones, and from Apple Mail:

> Apple Mail 5.0 included with Mac OS X Lion supports easy and direct IMAP account setup.

As others have pointed out, it's not available on all platforms. It's not transparently published either.

The claim was it doesn't have IMAP access. It does.

You can get secure offshore email, hosted in Switzerland for less than that at http://NeoMailbox.net

I have no affiliation with them whatsoever other than the fact I use the service.

Since Yahoo now charges $49.99 for ad free email, I can only infer that graphical ads on the sidebar must be really profitable (or Yahoo has plans to put more ads everywhere) and that Yahoo does not really want to entice many users to opt for the paid plan.

Of course, it could be that these paid users partially subsidize other features (previously out of reach) for the "free tier" users, but the pricing is really high and will be immediately be out of consideration for almost all users.

I wonder how many new users would sign up for this (as opposed to those already on Mail Plus and grandfathered at $19.99).

I remember when Yahoo was the goto email. Now that Gmail has the market share, will a fresh coat of paint relive the glory hey days of Yahoo Mail?

I'm using both and the best part about Gmail is the spam protection and the fact it's so easy to search. I have problems with Yahoo losing emails over the years and it's quite frustrating.

Just have to wait and see how this will affect it.

Good to see the update.

But why hide my folders on page load now? And also not display how many unread in them on top of the little folder icon?

And why auto-reveal the next message when deleting the previous one (from the previous design change)?

At least give me an option to enable/disable these "features" please.

Frustrating. Two steps forward, one back.

Agreed. It is amazing how it is possible for a product development team to come to believe that making me click several times to see the same information I could before via one click (or without clicking at all) is a good idea.

And still I get ~0 spam in my gmail account and lots of spam in my yahoo account that seems easy to trap (the "buy v1agr4" type)

My Yahoo account that is just for personal use and trusted vendors gets ~0 spam. Another Yahoo account for the remainder gets lots of spam. Part of the difference may be that I religiously use the Spam button for the first account.

These idiots keep screwing with their products. Thank god Yahoo is now only a secondary email for me. They removed tabs, the tabs were a great convenience. They fubared their fantasy sports site, recently added back the white theme, amidst a massive backlash.

I just don't get it, why mess with all this so damn often, and piss users off....

1. Yahoo doesn't change anything. Gets called unpopular and outdated. 2. Yahoo changes. Gets criticized as screwing their products.

I am on year 13 of their fantasy sports site. I'm going to know what works and what doesn't. From applets to flash to mobile....Not to be a jerk, but do you? Otherwise don't have this conversation with me.

On the iOS app, they are still using the "old" keyboard, not the iOS 7 one. But the app seems to be getting better, which is good news for those using Yahoo mail.

This is so, SO shamefully Gmail. :)

It definitely reminds me of the layout of Gmail, but I think it looks better.

Is it better to use? I had one spam message in my inbox, and when I tried to mark it spam I was unable to do so due to a layout glitch. I refreshed and tried again...and again...and eventually the message disappeared.

Definitely some bug fixes to be made. Even after the bug fixes -- could I use it to manage my email the same way I do with Gmail, with thousands of emails in and hundreds out per month? Not today, but I look forward to seeing Gmail get some competition.

Ooh cosmetic changes. Sheesh, what about availability, security, and better/faster search?

Yahoo Mail search is the best when it comes to going through some very old emails. Gmail search is effectively useless for me for everything that I sent or received half a year ago or earlier.

An always-https connection would be great. I've had no significant availability or search issues, ever.

Yahoo! mail has an always-https connection, at least mine does. Go to Settings -> Security -> Use SSL: http://imgur.com/q8DEnYs

Just FYI - you had to enable HTTPS in Gmail at one point. Same thing with Yahoo! It does not presume you want SSL all the time.

So can I read my yahoo mails on gmail without having to pay just to read them on my client or what ?

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