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10 reasons I'm switching from Yahoo Mail to Gmail
#2559 08/31/09 04:49 PM
Joined: Aug 2009
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I've finally decided to switch from Yahoo Mail to Gmail for personal email and thought this might be helpful for some people debating between the two. While some of my reasons may not apply to many others, I hope something here may be useful.

For years I've had a Yahoo Small Business account (pointed to by my own domain), which allowed me single-sign-on to both my free Yahoo "junk" account and my "real" personal email. However, I'm finally making the switch. Why?

1) Yahoo treats their free customers better than SMB. SMB accounts are always the last to get access to new features, redesigns, and enhancements. For example, it took months for Yahoo to finally roll our their "new" interface to my SMB account. Why should I pay to be a second class citizen?

2) Single-sign-on doesn't work well. Yahoo's implementation of linked accounts isn't supported properly by them. It doesn't work correctly with things like iPhone, Xobni, and other APIs. So having this account linkage has become more of a hindrance than an advantage.

3) New Yahoo home page = meh. I've been using Yahoo as my home page for about 15 years, even though I long ago switched to Google for search. But now Yahoo's forced their redesign homepage on us and I just don't like it. Too much white space, not enough at-a-glance surveyed info. One advantage of sticking with Yahoo was it tied to the homepage, but since I'm going to switch homepages that advantage is moot. Yahoo Fantasy Sports single-sign-on isn't enough reason to stay.

4)Yahoo Mail search just doesn't work. Very often I'll search for obvious key words and the results are lacking. I can scroll through my inbox and find the same keyword easily. I have asked Yahoo about this and received no response, let alone fix. As my mailbox continues to grow, this alone may be the deal-breaker.

5) Search vs Folders. One of the biggest UI differences between Yahoo and Gmail is Yahoo's traditional subfolder architecture vs Gmail's single Inbox with tag filters. My anal need to organize used to make me a die-hard folder guy. However, as email volumes have grown almost exponentially, inbox space has increased to nearly endless proportions, and my time to organize email has inversely shrunk, I'm finding myself straying from folder organization to search and tags. And that's where Gmail shines.

6) Threading. Okay, I'm still not a big fan of the threaded conversation view that Gmail uses. But I've found that once you give up on antique subfoldering, threading isn't as bothersome as it used to be. So while I still don't consider it a plus, it's no longer a minus.

7) Flexibility. From the ability to "send as", to the ability to simultaneously store & forward while also keeping POP/IMAP capabilities, Gmail is much more flexible than Yahoo. Some of their "Labs" add-ons are pretty nifty as well.

8) Attachment handling. Gmail allows more flexibility in handling attachments, including the ability to view inline as HTML and to open with Google Docs. Big time-saver.

9) Cost savings. In order to properly support my domain, I had to pay Yahoo for an SMB account. With Gmail, I can support my domain almost as well with a free account, since they offer send-as.

10) Ease of conversion. I've debated this for a while, but didn't want to spend the time to switch over. With Gmail's new import utility, however, I was easily able to migrate.


Keeper of the Magic Nickel
Re: 10 reasons I'm switching from Yahoo Mail to Gm
donikatz #2566 08/31/09 05:56 PM
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Can anyone think of anything that Yahoo has ever done that someone else has not done better?

Re: 10 reasons I'm switching from Yahoo Mail to Gm
Dave #2571 08/31/09 06:25 PM
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Up until recently, I would say Yahoo did many things very well. And even today, they still deliver a very good overall user experience, which is their main goal as a large web portal. Many of the Yahoo news sites are still excellent, including Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports. Unfortunately, the sum of its parts has become less than the whole, which is a big problem when fighting in the internet space where niche players can be heavyweights. Yahoo is now an old dinosaur in a mammalian world.

I'll add that one major advantage of Yahoo Mail over Gmail that I've found so far is that Gmail doesn't support two-way Blackberry sync, while Yahoo does. Messages read in the browser are not marked read in the Blackberry when using Gmail.


Keeper of the Magic Nickel
Re: 10 reasons I'm switching from Yahoo Mail to Gm
donikatz #2573 08/31/09 06:54 PM
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FWIW, methinks Yahoo! stinks.


That must be wonderful; I have no idea what it means.
— Molière
Re: 10 reasons I'm switching from Yahoo Mail to Gmail
donikatz #2574 08/31/09 07:32 PM
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Interesting.

I only use Yahoo for personal email and have more than one account there. I've found the Yahoo search to be brilliant - out of over 1,000 emails, it finds the references I am seeking instantly. As in SNAP! instantly.

ALSO, when I'm logged in to check emails, OMG, I can see if the person I'm corresponding with is also logged in at the same time, that's new. It's great, it means they're still alive and are reading their yahoo mail which has to be (in one particular instance) from me. Terrific! No need to email further or phone them up or text them, all's well, they're reading it.

Lately, however, whenever I sign in, they keep prompting me to look at their new interface. I'm not interested so I just click the x = shut up, go away, thanks.

Over on Gmail, there's miles more spam (as previously posted) and I don't like their "conversations" terminology. Just a personal preference, no doubt.

Home page? It's Google and always has been.

Attachment handling? Yahoo handles images fine as far as I'm concerned. The recipient gets a thumbnail at the end of their email, click on it and up comes the full picture. Text and zip file attachments work as they should, too. If I receive an attachment via Yahoo, down it comes and opens as it should - what's the problem?

Cost savings - can't comment other than my business domain has business email addresses (which I pay for) and I keep all private stuff away from there. Don't business customers expect a dot.com email address? Without the free-advertising words like yahoo in the address? (That's why I dumped demon, my original ISP - they wanted me to include the word demon in my email addresses. Sod that. They also wanted me to pay for an extra year's hosting+email fees to switch over to another ISP. SOD THAT! I just dumped them anyway and the net result was that I dumped a load of unwanted spammers.)


Re: 10 reasons I'm switching from Yahoo Mail to Gm
Bensheim #2576 08/31/09 07:49 PM
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Man, it's like folk are discussing totally different Googles and Yahoo!s.
Unreal! Or at least life in different dimensions [or dementions wink ].


That must be wonderful; I have no idea what it means.
— Molière
Re: 10 reasons I'm switching from Yahoo Mail to Gmail
Bensheim #2580 08/31/09 08:16 PM
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Quote:
I've found the Yahoo search to be brilliant - out of over 1,000 emails, it finds the references I am seeking instantly. As in SNAP! instantly.


Maybe it's because I have more like 7k+ emails? Maybe it's a bug because my account has been carried over through several major system upgrades? Maybe it's because of the linked free + SMB accounts? Dunno.

Quote:
Lately, however, whenever I sign in, they keep prompting me to look at their new interface.


That used to be the case for me, but last week they switched me to the new interface permanently. No choice anymore. Sigh.

Quote:
Home page? It's Google and always has been.


You must be a young'un. Many of use have been surfing since well before Google existed, and certainly well before Google had anything beyond a search bar. I'd been using Yahoo for 15 years until I just switched to Google News.

Quote:
Attachment handling? Yahoo handles images fine as far as I'm concerned.


I regularly get several docs at once, which Yahoo requires me to download as a zip or individually, while Gmail also allows me to view them inline, if desired. This is a huge time-saver if I want to just skim them quickly or go back to them for reference, which is very common. Gmail also plays better with inline images, especially in conjunction with ad blockers. Yahoo's attachment support isn't bad, it's just not as efficient.

Quote:
Don't business customers expect a dot.com email address?


Yes, that's my point. Since Yahoo doesn't let you "send as" another address, you can't simply forward a personal domain to Yahoo and reply to it from the same address. You have to actually host your mail @ Yahoo, which costs money. With Gmail, I can send as my personal domain, so I can just fwd my domain mail there free, without paying additional email hosting charges. And yes, good point: If I didn't pay for Yahoo SMB, I'd also be stuck with a Yahoo ad in my email. Forgot about that negative.

Additionally, for some odd reason Yahoo only allows you to enable POP access OR to forward your email (without storing it). Not sure why they don't allow store+fwd, so you can keep a copy locally AND fwd it. With Gmail, you can enable POP, IMAP, fwd, or store + fwd... the way you should be able to. Might not matter to many people, but it does to me.

Quote:
ALSO, when I'm logged in to check emails, OMG, I can see if the person I'm corresponding with is also logged in at the same time, that's new.


Gmail has that too, but for both services it only works if folks leave themselves listed as online (which in turn leaves you chat enabled). Personally, I turn that off.

Last edited by donikatz; 08/31/09 08:45 PM. Reason: One last quote

Keeper of the Magic Nickel
Re: 10 reasons I'm switching from Yahoo Mail to Gmail
donikatz #2629 09/01/09 01:22 PM
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Hi Don

More than 7,000 emails? Don't you ever clear them out? <blink>

I must be a young 'un? Nice of you.....the first Mac I ever used was in 1986 and I've been on them ever since. (23 years or so.)

The job before that was also in computing (it wasn't called IT then). Monitors were all fat CRT ones with black screens and white characters. There were no mice, icons, pull-down menus or separate windows. Everything was command-driven. Disk platters were the size of bus wheels, floppy disks were about 8" wide and really were floppy, everything was cabled together no matter how long the cables, and we had 8 terminals running off 512Kb of memory.

It was in the job before that that word processors were first invented and appeared in the work-place, and in the job before that a MASSIVE desk-sized thing which produced punched-tape to make standard letter templates.......that invention didn't take off for some strange reason.

I remember office life in the days before emails and before the internet started, I remember dial-up modems before broadband was invented, I remember daisy-wheel printers before PostScript laser printers were invented etc etc, so I'm not that much of a young 'un.......I just can't remember my first ever "home page" on a browser, it seems always to have been Google to me.

Best wishes smile

Re: 10 reasons I'm switching from Yahoo Mail to Gmail
Bensheim #2640 09/01/09 02:43 PM
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Quote:
More than 7,000 emails? Don't you ever clear them out?


In web mail? I used to, but not anymore. Not since they started giving us almost unlimited disk space a few years ago. That's the whole point of the endless free disk space they allot us: we're not supposed to ever have to clean it out anymore.

Quote:
so I'm not that much of a young 'un.......I just can't remember my first ever "home page" on a browser, it seems always to have been Google to me.


I hear that... Even though Google's only really been around about a decade, that does seem like forever in internet years. wink


Keeper of the Magic Nickel

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