Users Push Yahoo! and Google to Improve their Email Client
Some of the best known and most used email clients around are the ones belonging to the two companies that made their name thanks to their search engines: Yahoo! and Yahoo! Mail, and Google and Gmail. Both of these companies have been constantly improving their email client, and to no surprise some of the changes are spurred by user feedback.
Senior Product Manager with Yahoo! Mail, Rick Pal, comments: “As you may know, the Yahoo! Mail team has been pretty busy lately - adding Apps, strengthening our anti-spam, integrating IM into Classic Mail - and of course we’ve also been listening intently to you! Of course, not all of you have the new social features, but based on feedback from those that do, I’d like to talk about some upcoming changes we’re making.”
The upcoming changes Rick Pal was talking about are as follows:
- Non-Yahoo! sites that you regularly visit are now included in Yahoo! Mail, and more precisely in Updates. This way you will always be informed when any changes are made to your favorite sites.
- News and Weather are easier to spot because the connections module has been repositioned to the right. This makes News and Weather move up on the Yahoo! Mail page, making them easier to notice.
- The Address Book is getting a makeover. Renamed as Yahoo! Contacts, it integrates you contacts and connections and allows you to seamlessly manage them directly in Yahoo! Mail.
- The Yahoo! team will respect some users’ choice to sick with the old Yahoo! Mail homepage (that does not have connections features).
Moving on to Google and Gmail, the latest change the Mountain View made to their email client was to enhance the manner in which users upload attachments to outgoing messages (details here). Further changes have since then come to light: Google has brought back the “Search the Web” button due to user feedback, but by doing so it has also taken the time to enhance its features.
“You can use Gmail search the same way you'd use Google Search, by entering a word (or multiple words) that appears anywhere within the message you want to locate. If you're looking for a message that contains the word shopping, simply type shopping in the search field and press Search Mail. Your results will be displayed with your search terms highlighted in yellow,” explains Google.
Senior Product Manager with Yahoo! Mail, Rick Pal, comments: “As you may know, the Yahoo! Mail team has been pretty busy lately - adding Apps, strengthening our anti-spam, integrating IM into Classic Mail - and of course we’ve also been listening intently to you! Of course, not all of you have the new social features, but based on feedback from those that do, I’d like to talk about some upcoming changes we’re making.”
The upcoming changes Rick Pal was talking about are as follows:
- Non-Yahoo! sites that you regularly visit are now included in Yahoo! Mail, and more precisely in Updates. This way you will always be informed when any changes are made to your favorite sites.
- News and Weather are easier to spot because the connections module has been repositioned to the right. This makes News and Weather move up on the Yahoo! Mail page, making them easier to notice.
- The Address Book is getting a makeover. Renamed as Yahoo! Contacts, it integrates you contacts and connections and allows you to seamlessly manage them directly in Yahoo! Mail.
- The Yahoo! team will respect some users’ choice to sick with the old Yahoo! Mail homepage (that does not have connections features).
Moving on to Google and Gmail, the latest change the Mountain View made to their email client was to enhance the manner in which users upload attachments to outgoing messages (details here). Further changes have since then come to light: Google has brought back the “Search the Web” button due to user feedback, but by doing so it has also taken the time to enhance its features.
“You can use Gmail search the same way you'd use Google Search, by entering a word (or multiple words) that appears anywhere within the message you want to locate. If you're looking for a message that contains the word shopping, simply type shopping in the search field and press Search Mail. Your results will be displayed with your search terms highlighted in yellow,” explains Google.
