4 ms·

You, most of the HN crowd, and myself live in a world removed from the real world. I work for a company which sells fancy business cards and print products to d

You, most of the HN crowd, and myself live in a world removed from the real world. I work for a company which sells fancy business cards and print products to dentists who easily spend more than $1000 on one order, and you know what? They usually have an earthlink.net, aol.com, or yahoo.com email address, and nothing in this world is going to make them change that. I tell some customers we can set them up with your own business email FOR FREE, and they simply politely refuse. Yahoo has the eyeballs of people who actually spend money, not people like myself who want free email and who are trained to never click on an ad.

retroafroman 14y ago
Agree hugely on the 'separate world'. Anecdotally, most people I know outside the USA (and quite a few non-tech friends in the states) use yahoo, hotmail, and live.com addresses as well. I think their worldwide marketshare is rather high.
Maro 14y ago
I'm now part of a team working on a new product that just launched (not Google). Every morning I go in and look at the dashboard, which shows the email addresses of the last 10 new signups. About 6-7 is gmail, 1 yahoo, 1 hotmail. There's usually 1 that's a custom email like from an unknown domain. I don't have hard stats as I don't have access to the user db, but I've been playing this game for 1+ month every morning, and it's the same pattern all the time. This is for early adopters. Also, from personal experience, most of my acquaintances, whether technical or not, are migrating from yahoo/hotmail to gmail. It's pretty common for me to have to remove somebody's old yahoo email address from my contacts because they finally got a gmail address.
- ianbishop 14y ago
  Generally early adopters tend to be tech people though, which would explain the gmail addresses.
  - Maro 14y ago
    I know, that's why I wrote "This is for early adopters."
    - ianbishop 14y ago
      Sorry, I misread that you concluded that people must be moving away from hotmail/yahoo from this analysis.
- rokhayakebe 14y ago
  It would interesting if Groupon gave us insights into which email clients their customers use?
bambax 14y ago
I agree with you but I don't think your comment answers the question -- it answers the second part ("would anyone care if Yahoo disappeared?") but not the first part -- What is Yahoo / what's the Yahoo pitch? The Yahoo pitch may not be important for people who use Yahoo mail, but it matters to investors, and most of all it matters to recruits. What should Mrs Meyer say to people to make them want to work for Yahoo?
cpeterso 14y ago
I often see small businesses advertising "visit us at www.myexamplebusiness.com or email us at joesbiz23@hotmail.com". I've tried to explain that they can get a myexamplebusiness.com email address without changing current address, but they do not understand why it matters.

retroafroman 14y ago

Agree hugely on the 'separate world'. Anecdotally, most people I know outside the USA (and quite a few non-tech friends in the states) use yahoo, hotmail, and live.com addresses as well. I think their worldwide marketshare is rather high.

Maro 14y ago

I'm now part of a team working on a new product that just launched (not Google). Every morning I go in and look at the dashboard, which shows the email addresses of the last 10 new signups. About 6-7 is gmail, 1 yahoo, 1 hotmail. There's usually 1 that's a custom email like from an unknown domain. I don't have hard stats as I don't have access to the user db, but I've been playing this game for 1+ month every morning, and it's the same pattern all the time. This is for early adopters. Also, from personal experience, most of my acquaintances, whether technical or not, are migrating from yahoo/hotmail to gmail. It's pretty common for me to have to remove somebody's old yahoo email address from my contacts because they finally got a gmail address.

ianbishop 14y ago
Generally early adopters tend to be tech people though, which would explain the gmail addresses.
- Maro 14y ago
  I know, that's why I wrote "This is for early adopters."
  - ianbishop 14y ago
    Sorry, I misread that you concluded that people must be moving away from hotmail/yahoo from this analysis.
rokhayakebe 14y ago
It would interesting if Groupon gave us insights into which email clients their customers use?

bambax 14y ago

I agree with you but I don't think your comment answers the question -- it answers the second part ("would anyone care if Yahoo disappeared?") but not the first part -- What is Yahoo / what's the Yahoo pitch? The Yahoo pitch may not be important for people who use Yahoo mail, but it matters to investors, and most of all it matters to recruits. What should Mrs Meyer say to people to make them want to work for Yahoo?

cpeterso 14y ago

I often see small businesses advertising "visit us at www.myexamplebusiness.com or email us at joesbiz23@hotmail.com". I've tried to explain that they can get a myexamplebusiness.com email address without changing current address, but they do not understand why it matters.