Yahoo!’s free online email service is to grow new tentacles with the company planning to add two domains alongside its existing “@yahoo.com” addresses.The struggling internet firm said it is to introduce “@ymail.com” and “@rocketmail.com” to give people who use its service a better choice of Yahoo! email address options.
According to industry stats, the company has about 266 million peeps across the globe with a Yahoo! email address, making it the most popular web-based email in the world, ahead of Microsoft’s Hotmail and Google’s Gmail.
"We recognise that people want an email address that reflects who they are," Yahoo! Mail vice president John Kremer told Agence France-Presse.
"We have a lot of user IDs out there and it is pretty crowded. We want to remedy that and make sure users get the ID they want."
Free web-based mail addresses are typically dished out on a first-come, first-served basis, so the likelihood of the John Smiths of this world getting their first choice from the likes of Yahoo! or Hotmail is, well, unlikely.
"This adds millions and millions of new Yahoo accounts out there for users," Kremer said. "Effectively, we are tripling the size of the Yahoo name space."
Yahoo!’s decision to offer up alternative domain names in what is a clear grab for more users of its email service comes in a week when the firm’s CEO Jerry Yang has been attempting to steer his company through choppy waters.
Sliding revenues, a public spat with rebel investor Carl Icahn and the termination of takeover talks with rival Microsoft has proved too much for some Yahoo! execs in what has proved a testing week for Yang as well as the company’s shareholders.
Kremer, however, didn’t mention Yahoo!’s bottom line and instead preferred a little bit of navel gazing when describing the logic behind adding the new domains.
"A happy user is one that stays around and is a Yahoo user for life," he said.
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Yahoo Solves E-Mail Name Crisis With Two New Domains
According to Yahoo, we are facing an e-mail account crisis: there are too many similar accounts. In other words, Yahoo considers that there are too many IDs and the newcomers won’t be able to create an e-mail account according to their personality or name.
Also, because there are 260 million users on Yahoo mail (which we have to admit is an impressive number), the new users should register more and more complicated IDs.
The consequence? Instead of having a simple e-mail address, such as myname@yahoo.com, many Yahoo mail users end up with strange combinations such as myname_20005@yahoo.com or myhobby3456@yahoo.com.
So Yahoo decided to extend the possible combinations, by launching two new e-mail domains, rocketmail and ymail.
Through this move, Yahoo has practically tripled its available names and until its service will reach 800 million users, one does not have to bother about the name of the e-mail account.
In fact, saying that Yahoo has introduced two new e-mail domains is not entirely accurate, because rocketmail has been around since the early ages of the dot.com era. Rocketmail was acquired in 1997 when Yahoo decided that offering a free, web-based e-mail would be a nice addition to its services.
However, I think that not too many users will be thrilled by the new name, because it is longer than yahoo.com. Imagine how an e-mail like julie.stepehenson@rocketmail.com will sound.
The other domain, ymail.com is just perfect, but is kind of similar with another e-mail service. Yep! You’re right! I’m thinking about Gmail. Imagine the following conversation: “What is your e-mail address, honey?” “Me@ymail.com, you know, like in gmail, but with an Y."
OK, maybe I’m just a little bit harsh, but maybe Yahoo could have thought about better names.
Besides the name, the e-mail account from rocketmail and ymail will resemble perfectly the “true” Yahoo mail: same interface, same features, unlimited storage for free.
Also, because there are 260 million users on Yahoo mail (which we have to admit is an impressive number), the new users should register more and more complicated IDs.
The consequence? Instead of having a simple e-mail address, such as myname@yahoo.com, many Yahoo mail users end up with strange combinations such as myname_20005@yahoo.com or myhobby3456@yahoo.com.
So Yahoo decided to extend the possible combinations, by launching two new e-mail domains, rocketmail and ymail.
Through this move, Yahoo has practically tripled its available names and until its service will reach 800 million users, one does not have to bother about the name of the e-mail account.
In fact, saying that Yahoo has introduced two new e-mail domains is not entirely accurate, because rocketmail has been around since the early ages of the dot.com era. Rocketmail was acquired in 1997 when Yahoo decided that offering a free, web-based e-mail would be a nice addition to its services.
However, I think that not too many users will be thrilled by the new name, because it is longer than yahoo.com. Imagine how an e-mail like julie.stepehenson@rocketmail.com will sound.
The other domain, ymail.com is just perfect, but is kind of similar with another e-mail service. Yep! You’re right! I’m thinking about Gmail. Imagine the following conversation: “What is your e-mail address, honey?” “Me@ymail.com, you know, like in gmail, but with an Y."
OK, maybe I’m just a little bit harsh, but maybe Yahoo could have thought about better names.
Besides the name, the e-mail account from rocketmail and ymail will resemble perfectly the “true” Yahoo mail: same interface, same features, unlimited storage for free.
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