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Comparing Yahoo! Mail vs. GMail

Posted by Kyle Eslick on September 19th, 2007 | Category and Tags

As the world continues to move everything online, web-based e-mail services continue to grow in relevance with each passing day. Most mobile phones now support accessing your e-mail, allowing people to check their e-mail from pretty much anywhere. As a result, the web-based e-mail wars have heated up a little bit.

While to date Yahoo! Mail still boasts more users that its biggest competitor, over the past 3 years GMail has become the standard when it comes to web-based mail services, surpassing Yahoo! Mail as the web-based mail service of choice by most power users.

For me, the variety of options GMail gives, the sorting it does with my replies, and the fact that all the features are free is what keeps me there. With that said, there is no doubt that Google became content with their web-based mail service, as the innovation disappeared, presumably to apply their resources to other projects they have in the works. In the meantime, Yahoo! Mail has continued to improve their web-based e-mail service, and taken their innvoation to a new level.

Lifehacker has written a great post comparing Yahoo Mail vs. GMail, where they take a close look at both services and compare what they both have and in what areas each service is clearly superior. With mail fetching and all the other tools we have today, it has become increasingly easier to switch e-mail addresses, making it beneficial to try out other services and find what works best for you.

I’ve kind of felt all along that GMail appeals more to power users and people that spend a lot of time online, while Yahoo’s mail service is targeted more towards the occasional user. In appearance alone, they are completely different. Yahoo trys to give their software the appearance and many of the features of Microsoft Outlook, probably to ease the transition of people that use Outlook at home or at work. GMail has a Google-style look about it that is nice and unique, yet is very simple (which is how Google has made their name up until this point). I also see a lot of debates over folders vs labels.

So, which web-based e-mail service do you use and why do you prefer it? Sound off in the comments below!

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Comment by John Bennett on September 19th, 2007:

I use Gmail and have liked it ever since it came out. The improvements that were made since its launch were very welcomed ( accessing pop mail, labels, etc.), while there are a few I wish were improved (I wish you could select from a list of your contacts while forwarding).

Plus the size of the email inbox is great (I’ve filled about half my inbox so far with gmail, about 1.5 gb).
Comment by Crys on September 19th, 2007:

I use gmail when using an online service. Mainly for generic personal emails, and I have 3 separate gmail accounts. 1 for personal email, 1 for junk email and 1 for professional contact.

But many of my projects I use my domain email for, which is filtered through thunderbird (14 email addresses total). Even my junk email that is sent through gmail, eventually is sent to my thunderbird so I can check everything in one place when at home.
Comment by Kyle Eslick on September 19th, 2007:

John – Yeah, the GMail storage space is nice, although Yahoo! Mail actually gives unlimited storage space. Keeping my conversations together is the one feature that keeps me with GMail.

Crys – We are definitely a lot alike! I keep almost 10 e-mail addresses that all filter into one GMail account (to take advantage of their anti-spam filters), then download it into my Outlook/Thunderbird accounts (I switch back and forth between the two).
Comment by K-IntheHouse on September 19th, 2007:

Kyle, I switched to GMail when they offered private Beta and I have never turned back. I do like GMail and its labels a lot. I am not a folder person. But, Google has definitely slowed down with development in GMail front and that is sad. May be if enough of us start whining, they might take notice!

I would like to see some of the features in Yahoo Mail in GMail though!
Comment by Kyle Eslick on September 20th, 2007:

K – Yeah, Yahoo has a few nice features. Also, I would like the choice between folders and labels. I prefer labels, but many people seem to prefer folders, which I’ve never understood because that limits you to a single label for the e-mail.

I worry Google has pulled a Microsoft and pulled most of their resources off of the GMail project, like Microsoft did after IE6. I can see this for some of their projects, but e-mail requires constant innovation, integration, and improvement (the 3 i’s!).

To be honest, if it wasn’t for the threaded conversations and free features that Yahoo charges for, I think most people would have stuck with Yahoo. If Yahoo adds that stuff at some point, look out GMail.
Comment by Madhur Kapoor on September 20th, 2007:

My first choice is gmail . I think it is a bit faster than Yahoo .
Comment by Michael on September 21st, 2007:

I do love Gmail but have a little problem with it, I use an iPhone and I also want to do email on my computer. Now, this wouldn’t be a problem if POP access wasn’t so terrible (or if Gmail would support IMAP), what I ended up doing was setting my outgoing mail server to be gmail and my incoming as an IMAP account that Gmail was forwarding to, this solves all of my problems.
Comment by Karen Zara on September 21st, 2007:

I use Yahoo! Mail most of the time. Although I’m a huge Google fan, and despite being aware of GMail’s many qualities, I’m just too used to Yahoo! Mail. Nevertheless, I’ve become an involuntary GMail user when iG, a Brazilian ISP, made a partnership with Google and had their email system totally modified as a result (i.e. it was turned into a GMail clone). At first I found it quite slower, but now that I’m getting used to it I think I’m going to sign up for an authentic GMail account as well.
Comment by George on October 20th, 2007:

I used to think that Yahoo!Mail Plus ($20/year) email service was a much better alternative than Gmail, but my opinion is now the opposite after my recent experience of Yahoo losing 6 continuous weeks of ALL the emails sent to AND from my account during 2006. I lost hundreds of emails, which I was informed were “corrupted” after repeatedly reporting this problem to Yahoo Help (4 email exchanges on same topic with Yahoo’s help staff, all bu the last resulted in the same false “problem solved” form-letter reply). The final insult was Yahoo’s proposed solution – that I contact the senders and recipients of my lost emails and ask them to send me a copy of each correspondence.
Comment by Vinay on October 24th, 2007:

Gmail is vastly superior – there are no two ways about it. Yahoo’s clumsy graphic ads are sickening. Read on why I think Gmail is superior here on my blog: http://desinotes.com/why-gmail-is-still-better-than-yahoo-mail/