Now that Yahoo! Mail is out of beta, Mossberg wrote a comparison review and chose Yahoo!. I posted a review of the new Yahoo! Mail 90 minutes after it was launched in September, 2005, and the basics remain unchanged. Mossberg praises the same basic features that were in place back then.
Mossberg likes the tabs in Yahoo!, which also stood out to me as the groundbreaking feature from the start. With email tabs (as with Firefox tabs), you can multitask email effectively, keeping several inbox items open at a time. Gmails "New Window" feature is a clunky alternative that I dislike using every time I'm forced to. That's a main reason I like working on two computers -- I use two iterations of Gmail. Of course, one can also open Gmail in several browser tabs, but that's really clunky.
Mossberg also likes the drag-and-drop of emails into folders that Yahoo! provides, but that is less meaningful for me. The primary argument between Yahoo! Mail and Gmail is: Folders vs. Tagging. Tags win.
Then Mossberg says something odd: "Gmail [...] forces you to view your mails as bunched-up 'conversations'." But ... but ... threading is Gmails main differentiating advantage! It's not that you're forced into it; you benefit from this native layout scheme. It liberates you from the dreadful, eye-wearying scan down the long inbox list to find responses in a conversastion. Gmail is concise, and that is the primary imperative of a power email service.
Yahoo! Mail is a terrific accomplishment, and a sweet service. But my vote still goes to Gmail.
Yahoo! Mail vs. Gmail
Reader Comments
(Page 1)2. Actually threading is what made Kellye ditch gmail. To each their own. Her friends keep convos going via email, and quote the relevant portions. However, when convos break out into sub-groups (as happens in mine and hers) the threading kinda breaks, because you may have to wade through dispatches to different groups to find who you are really trying to communicate with. My, what a messy sentence...
Anyway, I also get around multiple emails at once but do it by using Mailplane and Gmail and 2 separate accounts on 2 browsers. Which still kinda sucks.
Posted at 11:40PM on Sep 18th 2007 by superpixel
3. You can call up a conversation view in Y! Mail. Simply Ctl-click the title of the email in the preview pane. Details on this at http://ymailupdates.com/blog/?p=13 .
Posted at 6:46PM on Oct 13th 2007 by Joe Beaulaurier
1. I agree that conversation threading is Gmail's greatest feature, and a feature that should have been the default in email clients 10, if not 20 years ago. And I just cannot fathom people's resistance to Gmail's Labels. If you really want folders, just use them like folders. End of story.
The only feature in Yahoo! Mail that I really envy is its tabs. In Gmail I often want to be able to have more than one message open at once, or have one message open while I compose an email in another tab. It can still be done in Gmail either by opening two Gmail sessions in different Firefox tabs, or by using the pop-out button to open different messages in different windows, but that's pretty kludgy.
Posted at 1:06PM on Aug 30th 2007 by Jordan Running