14 ms·

Yahoo Mail is not catching up anymore

145 points by babuskov 13y ago

malandrew 13y ago
I'm honestly surprised that there isn't yet any open-source software (client and server) that mimics Gmail but works with any IMAP service. If there is room for many email apps (Sparrow, Apple Mail, Mutt, Outlook, Thunderbird), there should be a market for many web-based email backends and there should be room for an open-source Gmail analogue that be people can extend and improve. Someone ought to make a web-mutt.
- lessnonymous 13y ago
  I run roundcube on my server for webmail access. It's a web-based IMAP client. I'm not sure what you want from a server that isn't already available in the existing open source IMAP servers.
tshtf 13y ago
1. Yahoo Mail 2-factor authentication support is woefully incomplete: http://www.zdnet.com/a-half-assed-additional-factor-does-not-equal-two-factor-security-7000017252/ http://www.zdnet.com/a-half-assed-additional-factor-does-not... 2. Yahoo Mail does not enforce SSL unless you choose obscure menu options: http://help.yahoo.com/kb/index?page=content&y=PROD_MAIL_ML&locale=en_US&id=SLN3610 http://help.yahoo.com/kb/index?page=content&y=PROD_MAIL_ML&l...
- onli 13y ago
  Not having SSL as default is unfortunate, but the menu options doesn't seem very obscure to me. Turn on SSL is the correct name for the option.
  - tshtf 13y ago
    That is (Gear icon) -> Mail Options -> General -> "Turn on SSL"... Four mouse clicks through menus is obscure enough, and then you have to do the same on every browser. It should be enabled by default.
    - NoPiece 13y ago
      It isn't that bad. It really is only 1 click to get there. Mouse over the gear and click mail options in the drop down. You are now on the general settings page that has the SSL option. You don't have to do it for every browser; the setting applies to your account. But you are right, it should be on by default.
    - justin66 13y ago
      Compared to the UI feel of Gmail lately, it doesn't sound all that bad. I'm seriously thinking of giving it a try.
- kmfrk 13y ago
  YMail TFA is also woefully unavailable to people outside the usual suspects of countries - which is something I don't really get for something as security-centric as an e-mail service.
wellboy 13y ago
The "best" email client now is one run by a non NSA-company using Ajax, so not Gmail, neither Yahoomail. Anyone knows good ones?
- stock_toaster 13y ago
  I like fastmail. Their two-factor auth leaves something to be desired though -- I also wish there was an imap/smtp only password type.
  - frenger 13y ago
    I moved to Fastmail too because they're Australian, though I later found out Australia is PRISM-compatible: http://www.theage.com.au/world/snowden-reveals-australias-links-to-us-spy-web-20130708-2plyg.html http://www.theage.com.au/world/snowden-reveals-australias-li... > "Mr Snowden said that the other partners in the "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance of the US, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand 'sometimes go even further than the [National Security Agency] people themselves.'" edit: got link wrong
    - stock_toaster 13y ago
      ;_; I actually looked for a mail service (besides google) inside the USA, because I figured spying on non-citizen services would be even more prevalent. But it came down to rackspace email (which was "just ok" but lacked any kind of two factor auth/alternative logins) and fastmail (which I found nicer).
  - ReidZB 13y ago
    Agreed on the two-factor auth bit: their implementation seems a bit wacky. (At least, their Google Authenticator TOTP implementation. It seemed like their Yubikey implementation was pretty good, but I don't have a Yubikey.) However, their "alternative login" thing is pretty useful. I have separate (completely random) passwords for the IMAP sync for my phone and work machine, so I can revoke those at any time without touching the master password. In some sense, that setup is similar to the one Google has for two-factor auth and service-specific passwords.
VikingCoder 13y ago
- Get a 1920x1080 monitor. No, really. Decent ones are cheap and awesome. That said, sure, GMail could support other resolutions better. I have to make my window tiny in order to make Reply remotely unusable - what's your problem with it? - I have the "Undo Send" Labs features enabled, so I can undo a lot more than your unintentional sends. I can undo my intentional but ill-considered sends, too. - I can go to Google and search, "When is my next flight" and see (based on my GMail mail confirmation message from the airline) when it is. That's awesome. Better, that integrates with Google Now on my phone. I don't even have to SEARCH, and I see when my flight is, what terminal, what gate, whether it's delayed. I hate to ask, but what browser are you using to access GMail?
- babuskov 13y ago
  - I cannot get 1920x1080 monitor on a laptop. It would defeat the purpose. My problem is this: http://backwardcompatible.net/images/gmail.png http://backwardcompatible.net/images/gmail.png * top posting is useless when you have long e-mail with 6-10 points to address in it. * being able to see 7 lines at a time is my real problem * the other real problem is when I have a 100-line email with 10 points to address in it and 10th point ends on line 34, I want to be able to easily cut the remaining 66 lines that come before the signature. I know that people using GMail won't see them anyway, but there are other people not using Google Mail and they will have to look through 66 lines to see if I replied to something else as well. There is no way to simply select those 66 lines and cut them. If I press shift+end, it selects to the end of the line. If I press shift+PageDown it scrolls the GMail page in the browser down, and I also lose sight of the cursor. Selecting it with mouse is also not straightforward, because of some weird scrolling. The text entry box is simply too small. They shouldn't have tried to fix something that was working perfectly. I understand Google engineers are not using Firefox and they are not replying to people who use products other than GMail and they have large screens. That is precisely why they lost sight of UX issues their users have. They believe everyone uses Google products only, and maybe they just don't care about those that don't, I really don't know. - I don't want to have Undo Send. I don't want to wait when I send an e-mail. I don't have time for that. - So, when you are searching for next flight, you should open GMail. I thought it should be used for e-mail, not search. ;) - Firefox. Are you implying that I should only use Chrome and GMail is not usable from other browsers?
lurkinggrue 13y ago
Have not encountered the slowness he is talking about.
- babuskov 13y ago
  If you have constant Internet connection, then it's fine. Try turning Internet off on your phone for 6 hours and turn it back on. If you have 50 new messages, it might take 5+ minutes for GMail to sync. Yahoo syncs in seconds. FWIW, this is on default Samsung Galaxy S2.
alphakappa 13y ago
I don't use Yahoo mail because they (used to) insert ads inside the body of your email. Which meant that if I sent an email to a friend, the footer would contain a yahoo ad. I'm not sure if they changed it, but I don't like the idea of sending an ad along with my email. Put an ad in my user interface all you like, but not in my content.
- insteadof 13y ago
  They did change it. Emails out no longer contain the hawking footer.
toki5 13y ago
I have to admit, I don't use Gmail for just e-mail. It's more or less my home page -- it's a portal to the people I chat with, the documents I access (on Drive) daily, and just so happens to be where I send e-mails from. These days, (to me anyway) the fact that Gmail is an e-mail service is a little incidental.
colmvp 13y ago
Speaking of e-mail, why does Gmail show a different total number of search results depending on which 'page' you're viewing it from the search results? At least Yahoo gives the exact number. Example: http://i.imgur.com/n1qeN3i.gif http://i.imgur.com/n1qeN3i.gif
- yannisp 13y ago
  You know, I still wonder the same thing, "1-20 of many" is quite annoying too..
- eli 13y ago
  It's an estimate. It would add additional time to the search to calculate an exact number.
  - medde 13y ago
    If it works like Google-Search, results are not an estimate, or not even random, it looks like it is inflated .... for example, if you navigate to https://www.google.com/search?q=zzzfgh https://www.google.com/search?q=zzzfgh , it tells you 5,900 results until you reach a page where there is no more results and it tells you 484 results (for example, I never seen an estimate that was lower then the real count)
    - tallanvor 13y ago
      Duplicate removal generally happens after the initial count is received. That's why you can get major variations in the count and the actual number of results.
      - medde 13y ago
        If I click: "If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.", I still don't get anywhere close to the initial count.
  - Tomis02 13y ago
    A very poor estimate.
masnick 13y ago
If you're tired of the gmail interface (like I was), I'd highly recommend http://fastmail.fm http://fastmail.fm. I made the switch (moved 55k+ messages with http://protips.maxmasnick.com/export-gmail-to-fastmail-or-any-email-provider-supporting-imap http://protips.maxmasnick.com/export-gmail-to-fastmail-or-an...) and haven't looked back. FastMail offers a similar infinite scroll feature. I was able to select and move several thousand messages through the web interface when I was first configuring it. FastMail's highlights for me are: - Really good, customizable "personalities" (alternate email addresses with their own SMPT servers, auto-BCC settings, etc.) - Sieve support -- SO much more powerful than rules in Gmail, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_(mail_filtering_language) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_(mail_filtering_language) - Customer support that actually responds and is super helpful in my experience - Ability to use your own domain name(s) without all the overhead of signing up for Google Apps. - Jabber support (not in-browser, but they do have a server that works with Adium/iChat/Pidgin) - Very fast, modern web interface. Definitely faster than Gmail for me. Good keyboard shortcuts too (very similar to Gmail's but with a few differences). - An archive folder that works well with the archive functionality in Mail.app and other clients. The only thing that isn't great is search. It works ok for everything but searching within messages (i.e. from/to/subject searches are fine). I believe FastMail does have support for a lot more search operators than Gmail and can search headers as well. But I'm not an expert on the power user search features for either. This is because I actually use the search in Mail.app on my Mac, which is actually better than Gmail's search capabilities for every search I've tried (same good results, but way faster). Obviously works great with FastMail too, and I figure it's good to have a local copy of email. I also miss a few things from the (old) gmail interface, but I definitely like FastMail's interface better on the whole than the new compose in Gmail. Things I miss in FastMail are the mainly the ability to pop composing a message into a new window with one click and sync with the address book on my phone. Neither are deal breakers. I actually use MailMate (http://freron.com http://freron.com) for the majority of my email access now. It's still a little rough around the edges but being able to compose emails in Markdown and see the entire hierarchy of a thread (not flattened into one level) is worth a bit of UX pain.
- gsharma 13y ago
  It bothers me that neither fastmail or freron have full screenshots of their interface. What reason can they have to not put a tour/screenshots section on the site?
s3r3nity 13y ago
This year has seen really interesting competitive threats to Gmail in the form of an improved Yahoo Mail and hotmail 2.0 (aka Outlook.com) I'm glad others are noticing as well -- competition is good =)
johnyzee 13y ago
GMail is deteriorating. I loathe the new 'reduced' inline reply UI. Half the time I am searching for how to reveal the sender address or subject field because I need to change them, but GMail seems to think this is an edge use case. Today I got the new tabbed inboxes - 'Primary', 'Social' and 'Promotions'. Lots of important email is now out of view from the primary inbox and buried with unimportant crap. This is so far from what I want I can't even recognize who GMail is trying to target with this. There is apparently no way to turn it off, either.
- jeffgreco 13y ago
  https://support.google.com/mail/answer/186534 https://support.google.com/mail/answer/186534
- jmartini 13y ago
  you can uncheck the other tabbed inboxes under "Configure Inbox" and everything will remain in the primary email. Seems to work for now...
- cheald 13y ago
  1. Click the arrow next to the "To". It'll give you the options for changing who it's sent to, or editing the subject. In the popup composition interface, clicking the word "To" gives you a nice recipient list editor. 2. Click the arrow next to the Inbox label. Select your preferred inbox type. http://cl.ly/image/1Z2M0c1z3T1B http://cl.ly/image/1Z2M0c1z3T1B
- vorporeal 13y ago
  Social and Promotions should basically just contain the "unimportant crap". If something is mis-categorized, you can drag it to the correct section and Gmail should learn from its mistake. Also, as mentioned below, you can revert to the un-tabbed inbox by going to the Inbox section of the settings and disabling all tabs other than Primary, or by selecting one of the split inboxes (Unread first, Priority, etc). Disclaimer: I'm a Gmail engineer.
  - beambot 13y ago
harshreality 13y ago
I believe currently Yahoo Mail is the only one of the big three (Gmail, Outlook.com) that still puts the client computer's IP address in the message headers for messages sent from the webmail interface.
comex 13y ago
There are only a few things I want from a Gmail competitor, whether it be a webapp or desktop app: - Search. Good, fast search over 7 GB of email. - Speed. - Undo send. - Multiple aliases on the same email account. It's definitely possible to beat Gmail in the first two, these days, but importing all that email into another service takes a while, so there had better be a good case that I'll get equal or superior functionality. A demo would be nice. Until then, I'll stick with the old compose, and probably find or write a user script to make the new one work like the old one once it goes away. (Incidentally, Mail.app comes quite close to meeting the first two, but its search is a bit wonky, and there's no undo send.)
- ineedtosleep 13y ago
  If one wants #2, I don't see #3 being viable in conjunction. How would an undo send work (other than placing it in some sort of delayed queue/spool)?
  - comex 13y ago
    Indeed, that's how Gmail's undo send works - it delays outgoing messages for ten seconds. Of course this is necessarily an exception to speed :)
  - Tyr42 13y ago
    It delays sending for a minute or 15 seconds, long enough to go, "WAIT, I forgot something, undo". Kinda useful.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - gcb0 13y ago
    undo send is dumb and the worst name/implementation. i'd either add a dialog (with default selected button being Cancel) or replace the Send button with a Preview button, which would show the message the same way you read a message, and there you would have the Send button.
barbs 13y ago
Not to mention the fact that Yahoo! actually cares about their users' privacy: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/yahoo-fight-for-users-earns-company-special-recognition https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/yahoo-fight-for-users-...
- tracker1 13y ago
  A stark change from when I stopped using Yahoo Mail... signed up a friend, and they already had spam by the time you got into the settings to "opt out" of having your address submitted to third parties.
- justinreeves 13y ago
  Do they really? https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013 https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013
  - wutbrodo 13y ago
    I sympathize with the attempt, but you're in the wrong place for anything but incoherent babbling when it comes to Google.
nazgulnarsil 13y ago
Which email client supports sub-addresses and sending such mail to automatically generated folders? For the email foo@foo.com, I want to be able to give someone foo+bar@foo.com and when they email me it automatically goes into a generated bar folder without any additional clicks or configuration from me.
- nmjenkins 13y ago
  FastMail will do this if the folder already exists, but won't automatically create the folder.
- ReidZB 13y ago
  FastMail can do this just fine. However, it has a really nifty feature that makes this idea work much better, in my opinion. You can configure FastMail to use "virtual domains" that will reroute b@a.example.com to a+b@example.com. (To use this, you need a MX record for *.example.com, but that's fine.) So, for example, I may sign up for a SpammyService with the email spammy@myemail.mydomain.com. Then all emails from SpammyService will be redirected to myemail+spammy@mydomain.com, which will then be filed in the appropriate folder. This lets me (1) get around services that disallow plus signs in emails and (2) not let an automated system know that I'm auto-filing their emails (and potentially deleting them, etc.)
ValentineC 13y ago
I'm looking forward to a Yahoo Mail for Domains feature. If they introduce it, it could mean the nail in the coffin for Gmail.
- foxylad 13y ago
  Just checked: http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/email/ http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/email/ I was stung by the loss of free apps for domains, because I use Appengine and need several distinct email addresses per app. None of them need Drive or anything but email forwarding, so $50 per year per address means a considerable expense. Yahoo's $120 per ten addresses seems far more reasonable.
  - calebegg 13y ago
    You can use Google Apps' "groups" feature to get forwarding. You can also set a catch-all address that gets email sent to any valid address at your domain.
- oz 13y ago
  For what it's worth, Outlook.com now offers free mail hosting for your domain, up to I think 150 addresses.
  - tuananh 13y ago
    50, I believe. And no IMAP though.
    - oz 13y ago
      Yeah, no IMAP is a bummer.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
neovive 13y ago
There doesn't seem to be any viable competitors for the combination of GMail + Google Drive. The Drive Apps infrastructure and integration into one account is above and beyond the competition.
SourPatch 13y ago
Maybe I'm on the fringe, but the yahoo mail experience for me through a browser has been terrible since their last big iteration. It is often unresponsive to the point of being unusable.
falk 13y ago
I'd love to see Yahoo! differentiate itself from its competitors by becoming a privacy conscious company.
bmy78 13y ago
I really think Yahoo Mail has seriously improved over the past couple of years. I've had an account with them for over 10 years and while gmail originally had more features, I find Yahoo Mail's UI experience superior.
sourc3 13y ago
Although my primary email is Gmail, I recently had the need to get an email for a domain name I own. Since Google stopped offering free custom domain emails, I gave Outlook.com a try. I was pleasantly surprised. Things seem to make a lot of sense and I like their metro/flat design on the web, easy on the eye. If you are bored of the new UI changes to Gmail, I'd suggest you check out Outlook.com as an alternative.
robomartin 13y ago
I've been using Yahoo mail for many, many years. I've always been happy with it. I've tweaked some of it with my own custom CSS here and there and it's great. At some level it feels very much like running Outlook on the desktop, which is what I run for my businesses (I run multiple simultaneous instances of Outlook accessing a separate database per business). I tried Gmail a few years ago and it simply did not hold a candle to the speed and convenience of Yahoo's offering. They've done a few things I am not thrilled about on the last major update but they seem to be tweaking it behind the scenes. Beyond that, I've been very much against relying on Google for anything that is critical to my business. Why? They can shut down your entire account and every single Google service you use in a microsecond. When they do you will not know why and you will have no sensible path to addressing or even discovering the problem. That, to me, is the deal breaker. Why cares about the minutiae of their UI, setup, lists, tabs, spam filtering, etc. Your email account can evaporate overnight and you will not be able to do a thing about it. I, frankly, don't cannot comprehend why any business person would even consider using them.
iopq 13y ago
I use Opera Mail for GMail, but I installed Y! Mail for Android after reading this because GMail somehow sucks at sending pictures with my phone. Now that I've tried it, Yahoo is much faster. Thanks.
inthepink 13y ago
But, Ymail for the desktop still suffers... The back button is murder! And I might understand tabs for drafts, but why for each mail I read? I am forever trying to close them.
- inthepink 13y ago
  Wohoo! They seemed to have fixed the back button issue to some extent. But it still has a weird behaviour those in-app tabs.
mtgx 13y ago
I'd rather wait for the Mega e-mail.
evolve2k 13y ago
So a yahoo.com account could be once again become the sign of the tech hipster. Is yahoo mail the new black?
josteink 13y ago
I remember back when I was proud to have managed to get a gmail-invite. Gmail was so ahead of everyone else it wasn't even fun. It was even ahead of desktop-clients, which at the time was no small feat. Those were the days of full-page-reload (X)HTML4 pages and the best webmail on the market made people prefer text-mode clients like "pine" instead. Web surpassing the desktop in user experience during those days were literally unheard of. Those days are long gone. These days I'm looking for whatever looks like a viable replacement. I really want to get out.

145 points by babuskov 13y ago

I'm honestly surprised that there isn't yet any open-source software (client and server) that mimics Gmail but works with any IMAP service. If there is room for many email apps (Sparrow, Apple Mail, Mutt, Outlook, Thunderbird), there should be a market for many web-based email backends and there should be room for an open-source Gmail analogue that be people can extend and improve. Someone ought to make a web-mutt.

lessnonymous 13y ago
I run roundcube on my server for webmail access. It's a web-based IMAP client. I'm not sure what you want from a server that isn't already available in the existing open source IMAP servers.

tshtf 13y ago

1. Yahoo Mail 2-factor authentication support is woefully incomplete: http://www.zdnet.com/a-half-assed-additional-factor-does-not-equal-two-factor-security-7000017252/ http://www.zdnet.com/a-half-assed-additional-factor-does-not... 2. Yahoo Mail does not enforce SSL unless you choose obscure menu options: http://help.yahoo.com/kb/index?page=content&y=PROD_MAIL_ML&locale=en_US&id=SLN3610 http://help.yahoo.com/kb/index?page=content&y=PROD_MAIL_ML&l...

onli 13y ago
Not having SSL as default is unfortunate, but the menu options doesn't seem very obscure to me. Turn on SSL is the correct name for the option.
- tshtf 13y ago
  That is (Gear icon) -> Mail Options -> General -> "Turn on SSL"... Four mouse clicks through menus is obscure enough, and then you have to do the same on every browser. It should be enabled by default.
  - NoPiece 13y ago
    It isn't that bad. It really is only 1 click to get there. Mouse over the gear and click mail options in the drop down. You are now on the general settings page that has the SSL option. You don't have to do it for every browser; the setting applies to your account. But you are right, it should be on by default.
  - justin66 13y ago
    Compared to the UI feel of Gmail lately, it doesn't sound all that bad. I'm seriously thinking of giving it a try.
kmfrk 13y ago
YMail TFA is also woefully unavailable to people outside the usual suspects of countries - which is something I don't really get for something as security-centric as an e-mail service.

wellboy 13y ago

The "best" email client now is one run by a non NSA-company using Ajax, so not Gmail, neither Yahoomail. Anyone knows good ones?

stock_toaster 13y ago
I like fastmail. Their two-factor auth leaves something to be desired though -- I also wish there was an imap/smtp only password type.
- frenger 13y ago
  I moved to Fastmail too because they're Australian, though I later found out Australia is PRISM-compatible: http://www.theage.com.au/world/snowden-reveals-australias-links-to-us-spy-web-20130708-2plyg.html http://www.theage.com.au/world/snowden-reveals-australias-li... > "Mr Snowden said that the other partners in the "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance of the US, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand 'sometimes go even further than the [National Security Agency] people themselves.'" edit: got link wrong
  - stock_toaster 13y ago
    ;_; I actually looked for a mail service (besides google) inside the USA, because I figured spying on non-citizen services would be even more prevalent. But it came down to rackspace email (which was "just ok" but lacked any kind of two factor auth/alternative logins) and fastmail (which I found nicer).
- ReidZB 13y ago
  Agreed on the two-factor auth bit: their implementation seems a bit wacky. (At least, their Google Authenticator TOTP implementation. It seemed like their Yubikey implementation was pretty good, but I don't have a Yubikey.) However, their "alternative login" thing is pretty useful. I have separate (completely random) passwords for the IMAP sync for my phone and work machine, so I can revoke those at any time without touching the master password. In some sense, that setup is similar to the one Google has for two-factor auth and service-specific passwords.

VikingCoder 13y ago

- Get a 1920x1080 monitor. No, really. Decent ones are cheap and awesome. That said, sure, GMail could support other resolutions better. I have to make my window tiny in order to make Reply remotely unusable - what's your problem with it? - I have the "Undo Send" Labs features enabled, so I can undo a lot more than your unintentional sends. I can undo my intentional but ill-considered sends, too. - I can go to Google and search, "When is my next flight" and see (based on my GMail mail confirmation message from the airline) when it is. That's awesome. Better, that integrates with Google Now on my phone. I don't even have to SEARCH, and I see when my flight is, what terminal, what gate, whether it's delayed. I hate to ask, but what browser are you using to access GMail?

babuskov 13y ago
- I cannot get 1920x1080 monitor on a laptop. It would defeat the purpose. My problem is this: http://backwardcompatible.net/images/gmail.png http://backwardcompatible.net/images/gmail.png * top posting is useless when you have long e-mail with 6-10 points to address in it. * being able to see 7 lines at a time is my real problem * the other real problem is when I have a 100-line email with 10 points to address in it and 10th point ends on line 34, I want to be able to easily cut the remaining 66 lines that come before the signature. I know that people using GMail won't see them anyway, but there are other people not using Google Mail and they will have to look through 66 lines to see if I replied to something else as well. There is no way to simply select those 66 lines and cut them. If I press shift+end, it selects to the end of the line. If I press shift+PageDown it scrolls the GMail page in the browser down, and I also lose sight of the cursor. Selecting it with mouse is also not straightforward, because of some weird scrolling. The text entry box is simply too small. They shouldn't have tried to fix something that was working perfectly. I understand Google engineers are not using Firefox and they are not replying to people who use products other than GMail and they have large screens. That is precisely why they lost sight of UX issues their users have. They believe everyone uses Google products only, and maybe they just don't care about those that don't, I really don't know. - I don't want to have Undo Send. I don't want to wait when I send an e-mail. I don't have time for that. - So, when you are searching for next flight, you should open GMail. I thought it should be used for e-mail, not search. ;) - Firefox. Are you implying that I should only use Chrome and GMail is not usable from other browsers?

lurkinggrue 13y ago

Have not encountered the slowness he is talking about.

babuskov 13y ago
If you have constant Internet connection, then it's fine. Try turning Internet off on your phone for 6 hours and turn it back on. If you have 50 new messages, it might take 5+ minutes for GMail to sync. Yahoo syncs in seconds. FWIW, this is on default Samsung Galaxy S2.

alphakappa 13y ago

I don't use Yahoo mail because they (used to) insert ads inside the body of your email. Which meant that if I sent an email to a friend, the footer would contain a yahoo ad. I'm not sure if they changed it, but I don't like the idea of sending an ad along with my email. Put an ad in my user interface all you like, but not in my content.

insteadof 13y ago
They did change it. Emails out no longer contain the hawking footer.

toki5 13y ago

I have to admit, I don't use Gmail for just e-mail. It's more or less my home page -- it's a portal to the people I chat with, the documents I access (on Drive) daily, and just so happens to be where I send e-mails from. These days, (to me anyway) the fact that Gmail is an e-mail service is a little incidental.

colmvp 13y ago

Speaking of e-mail, why does Gmail show a different total number of search results depending on which 'page' you're viewing it from the search results? At least Yahoo gives the exact number. Example: http://i.imgur.com/n1qeN3i.gif http://i.imgur.com/n1qeN3i.gif

yannisp 13y ago
You know, I still wonder the same thing, "1-20 of many" is quite annoying too..
eli 13y ago
It's an estimate. It would add additional time to the search to calculate an exact number.
- medde 13y ago
  If it works like Google-Search, results are not an estimate, or not even random, it looks like it is inflated .... for example, if you navigate to https://www.google.com/search?q=zzzfgh https://www.google.com/search?q=zzzfgh , it tells you 5,900 results until you reach a page where there is no more results and it tells you 484 results (for example, I never seen an estimate that was lower then the real count)
  - tallanvor 13y ago
    Duplicate removal generally happens after the initial count is received. That's why you can get major variations in the count and the actual number of results.
    - medde 13y ago
      If I click: "If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.", I still don't get anywhere close to the initial count.
- Tomis02 13y ago
  A very poor estimate.

masnick 13y ago

If you're tired of the gmail interface (like I was), I'd highly recommend http://fastmail.fm http://fastmail.fm. I made the switch (moved 55k+ messages with http://protips.maxmasnick.com/export-gmail-to-fastmail-or-any-email-provider-supporting-imap http://protips.maxmasnick.com/export-gmail-to-fastmail-or-an...) and haven't looked back. FastMail offers a similar infinite scroll feature. I was able to select and move several thousand messages through the web interface when I was first configuring it. FastMail's highlights for me are: - Really good, customizable "personalities" (alternate email addresses with their own SMPT servers, auto-BCC settings, etc.) - Sieve support -- SO much more powerful than rules in Gmail, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_(mail_filtering_language) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_(mail_filtering_language) - Customer support that actually responds and is super helpful in my experience - Ability to use your own domain name(s) without all the overhead of signing up for Google Apps. - Jabber support (not in-browser, but they do have a server that works with Adium/iChat/Pidgin) - Very fast, modern web interface. Definitely faster than Gmail for me. Good keyboard shortcuts too (very similar to Gmail's but with a few differences). - An archive folder that works well with the archive functionality in Mail.app and other clients. The only thing that isn't great is search. It works ok for everything but searching within messages (i.e. from/to/subject searches are fine). I believe FastMail does have support for a lot more search operators than Gmail and can search headers as well. But I'm not an expert on the power user search features for either. This is because I actually use the search in Mail.app on my Mac, which is actually better than Gmail's search capabilities for every search I've tried (same good results, but way faster). Obviously works great with FastMail too, and I figure it's good to have a local copy of email. I also miss a few things from the (old) gmail interface, but I definitely like FastMail's interface better on the whole than the new compose in Gmail. Things I miss in FastMail are the mainly the ability to pop composing a message into a new window with one click and sync with the address book on my phone. Neither are deal breakers. I actually use MailMate (http://freron.com http://freron.com) for the majority of my email access now. It's still a little rough around the edges but being able to compose emails in Markdown and see the entire hierarchy of a thread (not flattened into one level) is worth a bit of UX pain.

gsharma 13y ago
It bothers me that neither fastmail or freron have full screenshots of their interface. What reason can they have to not put a tour/screenshots section on the site?

s3r3nity 13y ago

This year has seen really interesting competitive threats to Gmail in the form of an improved Yahoo Mail and hotmail 2.0 (aka Outlook.com) I'm glad others are noticing as well -- competition is good =)

johnyzee 13y ago

GMail is deteriorating. I loathe the new 'reduced' inline reply UI. Half the time I am searching for how to reveal the sender address or subject field because I need to change them, but GMail seems to think this is an edge use case. Today I got the new tabbed inboxes - 'Primary', 'Social' and 'Promotions'. Lots of important email is now out of view from the primary inbox and buried with unimportant crap. This is so far from what I want I can't even recognize who GMail is trying to target with this. There is apparently no way to turn it off, either.

jeffgreco 13y ago
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/186534 https://support.google.com/mail/answer/186534
jmartini 13y ago
you can uncheck the other tabbed inboxes under "Configure Inbox" and everything will remain in the primary email. Seems to work for now...
cheald 13y ago
1. Click the arrow next to the "To". It'll give you the options for changing who it's sent to, or editing the subject. In the popup composition interface, clicking the word "To" gives you a nice recipient list editor. 2. Click the arrow next to the Inbox label. Select your preferred inbox type. http://cl.ly/image/1Z2M0c1z3T1B http://cl.ly/image/1Z2M0c1z3T1B
vorporeal 13y ago
Social and Promotions should basically just contain the "unimportant crap". If something is mis-categorized, you can drag it to the correct section and Gmail should learn from its mistake. Also, as mentioned below, you can revert to the un-tabbed inbox by going to the Inbox section of the settings and disabling all tabs other than Primary, or by selecting one of the split inboxes (Unread first, Priority, etc). Disclaimer: I'm a Gmail engineer.
- beambot 13y ago

harshreality 13y ago

I believe currently Yahoo Mail is the only one of the big three (Gmail, Outlook.com) that still puts the client computer's IP address in the message headers for messages sent from the webmail interface.

comex 13y ago

There are only a few things I want from a Gmail competitor, whether it be a webapp or desktop app: - Search. Good, fast search over 7 GB of email. - Speed. - Undo send. - Multiple aliases on the same email account. It's definitely possible to beat Gmail in the first two, these days, but importing all that email into another service takes a while, so there had better be a good case that I'll get equal or superior functionality. A demo would be nice. Until then, I'll stick with the old compose, and probably find or write a user script to make the new one work like the old one once it goes away. (Incidentally, Mail.app comes quite close to meeting the first two, but its search is a bit wonky, and there's no undo send.)

ineedtosleep 13y ago
If one wants #2, I don't see #3 being viable in conjunction. How would an undo send work (other than placing it in some sort of delayed queue/spool)?
- comex 13y ago
  Indeed, that's how Gmail's undo send works - it delays outgoing messages for ten seconds. Of course this is necessarily an exception to speed :)
- Tyr42 13y ago
  It delays sending for a minute or 15 seconds, long enough to go, "WAIT, I forgot something, undo". Kinda useful.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- gcb0 13y ago
  undo send is dumb and the worst name/implementation. i'd either add a dialog (with default selected button being Cancel) or replace the Send button with a Preview button, which would show the message the same way you read a message, and there you would have the Send button.

barbs 13y ago

Not to mention the fact that Yahoo! actually cares about their users' privacy: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/yahoo-fight-for-users-earns-company-special-recognition https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/yahoo-fight-for-users-...

tracker1 13y ago
A stark change from when I stopped using Yahoo Mail... signed up a friend, and they already had spam by the time you got into the settings to "opt out" of having your address submitted to third parties.
justinreeves 13y ago
Do they really? https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013 https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013
- wutbrodo 13y ago
  I sympathize with the attempt, but you're in the wrong place for anything but incoherent babbling when it comes to Google.

nazgulnarsil 13y ago

Which email client supports sub-addresses and sending such mail to automatically generated folders? For the email foo@foo.com, I want to be able to give someone foo+bar@foo.com and when they email me it automatically goes into a generated bar folder without any additional clicks or configuration from me.

nmjenkins 13y ago
FastMail will do this if the folder already exists, but won't automatically create the folder.
ReidZB 13y ago
FastMail can do this just fine. However, it has a really nifty feature that makes this idea work much better, in my opinion. You can configure FastMail to use "virtual domains" that will reroute b@a.example.com to a+b@example.com. (To use this, you need a MX record for *.example.com, but that's fine.) So, for example, I may sign up for a SpammyService with the email spammy@myemail.mydomain.com. Then all emails from SpammyService will be redirected to myemail+spammy@mydomain.com, which will then be filed in the appropriate folder. This lets me (1) get around services that disallow plus signs in emails and (2) not let an automated system know that I'm auto-filing their emails (and potentially deleting them, etc.)

ValentineC 13y ago

I'm looking forward to a Yahoo Mail for Domains feature. If they introduce it, it could mean the nail in the coffin for Gmail.

foxylad 13y ago
Just checked: http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/email/ http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/email/ I was stung by the loss of free apps for domains, because I use Appengine and need several distinct email addresses per app. None of them need Drive or anything but email forwarding, so $50 per year per address means a considerable expense. Yahoo's $120 per ten addresses seems far more reasonable.
- calebegg 13y ago
  You can use Google Apps' "groups" feature to get forwarding. You can also set a catch-all address that gets email sent to any valid address at your domain.
oz 13y ago
For what it's worth, Outlook.com now offers free mail hosting for your domain, up to I think 150 addresses.
- tuananh 13y ago
  50, I believe. And no IMAP though.
  - oz 13y ago
    Yeah, no IMAP is a bummer.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

neovive 13y ago

There doesn't seem to be any viable competitors for the combination of GMail + Google Drive. The Drive Apps infrastructure and integration into one account is above and beyond the competition.

SourPatch 13y ago

Maybe I'm on the fringe, but the yahoo mail experience for me through a browser has been terrible since their last big iteration. It is often unresponsive to the point of being unusable.

falk 13y ago

I'd love to see Yahoo! differentiate itself from its competitors by becoming a privacy conscious company.

bmy78 13y ago

I really think Yahoo Mail has seriously improved over the past couple of years. I've had an account with them for over 10 years and while gmail originally had more features, I find Yahoo Mail's UI experience superior.

sourc3 13y ago

Although my primary email is Gmail, I recently had the need to get an email for a domain name I own. Since Google stopped offering free custom domain emails, I gave Outlook.com a try. I was pleasantly surprised. Things seem to make a lot of sense and I like their metro/flat design on the web, easy on the eye. If you are bored of the new UI changes to Gmail, I'd suggest you check out Outlook.com as an alternative.

robomartin 13y ago

I've been using Yahoo mail for many, many years. I've always been happy with it. I've tweaked some of it with my own custom CSS here and there and it's great. At some level it feels very much like running Outlook on the desktop, which is what I run for my businesses (I run multiple simultaneous instances of Outlook accessing a separate database per business). I tried Gmail a few years ago and it simply did not hold a candle to the speed and convenience of Yahoo's offering. They've done a few things I am not thrilled about on the last major update but they seem to be tweaking it behind the scenes. Beyond that, I've been very much against relying on Google for anything that is critical to my business. Why? They can shut down your entire account and every single Google service you use in a microsecond. When they do you will not know why and you will have no sensible path to addressing or even discovering the problem. That, to me, is the deal breaker. Why cares about the minutiae of their UI, setup, lists, tabs, spam filtering, etc. Your email account can evaporate overnight and you will not be able to do a thing about it. I, frankly, don't cannot comprehend why any business person would even consider using them.

iopq 13y ago

I use Opera Mail for GMail, but I installed Y! Mail for Android after reading this because GMail somehow sucks at sending pictures with my phone. Now that I've tried it, Yahoo is much faster. Thanks.

inthepink 13y ago

But, Ymail for the desktop still suffers... The back button is murder! And I might understand tabs for drafts, but why for each mail I read? I am forever trying to close them.

inthepink 13y ago
Wohoo! They seemed to have fixed the back button issue to some extent. But it still has a weird behaviour those in-app tabs.

mtgx 13y ago

I'd rather wait for the Mega e-mail.

evolve2k 13y ago

So a yahoo.com account could be once again become the sign of the tech hipster. Is yahoo mail the new black?

josteink 13y ago

I remember back when I was proud to have managed to get a gmail-invite. Gmail was so ahead of everyone else it wasn't even fun. It was even ahead of desktop-clients, which at the time was no small feat. Those were the days of full-page-reload (X)HTML4 pages and the best webmail on the market made people prefer text-mode clients like "pine" instead. Web surpassing the desktop in user experience during those days were literally unheard of. Those days are long gone. These days I'm looking for whatever looks like a viable replacement. I really want to get out.