Yahoo Lets Outsiders Get Inside Its Email

from the taking-a-look dept

Mon, Oct 2nd 2006 8:45am — Joseph Weisenthal

When Google unveiled Gmail, it immediately leapt far ahead of competing free, web-based email services, in terms of storage and features. Since then, rivals like Hotmail and Yahoo have tried to match Google's offering, but the development process has been slow. Now Yahoo is adopting a strategy that it should have tried much earlier, turning its mail service into a platform upon which others can develop new applications. So, a third party could develop a new display for the email, build new features for it, or combine it with other applications. This makes sense for multiple reasons. Yahoo doesn't know exactly what will be a hit with consumers; it could put a lot of effort into one new system, only to see it be a dud. And by opening it up, it makes web mail more like regular email, which people can access using a variety of programs and services. So far, Google has the reputation for building out platforms and services that then get incorporated into other applications, whereas Yahoo has taken hesitant steps down this path. Perhaps now, the company is realizing that for competitive reasons it needs to be bolder about opening up.

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5 Comments

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Steve E, 2 Oct 2006 @ 9:34am

Top move by Yahoo, hopefully we'll see desktop widgets, plug-ins, spam filtering tools and decent readers come out of all this!
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Oct 2006 @ 9:43am

Interesting, but what could be developed for email that is more effective than Thunderbird? And how do you pry corporate users away from Outlook?

Email is not a particularly feature-rich application. Spam tools, small footprint, clean interface, reliable. Done.

Build an open source cross-platform, cross company calendar and email application to compete with Outlook. THAT would get my attention. (Lightning isn't going to be ready for primetime for years, if ever)
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COD (profile), 2 Oct 2006 @ 10:38am

What if you could use you YahooID to log into blogs to comment? An authentication system with 200 million users on day 1 would be a big deal I think.
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MEoip, 2 Oct 2006 @ 1:15pm

apt
I'd be apt to use one of these 3rd party yahoo deals. Yahoo's beta is SLOW to the point my wife even complains about its speed and is thankfully closer to switching to gmail. Of course the system would have to be web based and fast. It could be nice to have some multiple login put together like a yahgoohotmail, where I can set one password and access email from all systems without forwarding or any of that garbage. A real online mail client where I can get more than 1 addresses message.
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