Yahoo has announced that is has started testing a new version of it’s free email service Yahoo Mail. This new Yahoo Mail version is said to look and feel more like a desktop solution like Microsoft Outlook but still function over the Internet. Many of the changes have been made to keep up with other competitors like Google Gmail, AOL Mail and MSN Hotmail. However, according to these numbers posted on Wired News, "Yahoo's e-mail service is currently leading the pack, with 63.6 million
U.S. visitors during July, according to the most recent figures from
comScore Media Metrix. AOL ranked second with 48.7 million visitors
followed by MSN's Hotmail (44.4 million), Comcast's Webmail (5.6
million) and Google's Gmail (5.4 million)."
Yahoo says the changes to Yahoo Mail are the most significant changes they have made to the mail product in 8 years. According to several reports Yahoo has leveraged the acquisition of the email start-up Oddpost last year and incorporation dynamic HTML to allow users a sleeker look and feel with less paging and more scrolling ability. I have not had a chance to see the new Yahoo product yet but it sounds like it is going to be innovative.
Check out this post on Silicon Beat and this article on Wired News for more details.
