First Look: Inside Yahoo Mail's Massive Cloud E-Mail Update

Gunning For Google Gmail

Yahoo launched a significant Yahoo Mail update this week for all of its 284 million users. The revised Yahoo Mail, the search giant's cloud e-mail offering, is Yahoo's shot to take back some of the users it lost to chief rivals Google Gmail and Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail. The Yahoo Mail update features a host of new social capabilities, new security and a host of other new features and function the company said makes it the "best Yahoo Mail ever."

New Design

The Yahoo Mail features a new design (shown here) and adds a host of social networking, security and media viewing capabilities. Users can also customize their Yahoo Mail inboxes with about 50 different theme and stationary options, Yahoo said.

Yahoo Mail is in a perpetual three-way cloud e-mail battle with competitors Google Gmail and Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail. Gmail has been consistently chipping away at Yahoo Mail's market share. According to recent research from comScore Inc., Yahoo Mail had 277 million users globally through April 2011, a dip of 1 percent, or 3 million, from a year prior. Meanwhile, Google's Gmail increased a whopping 24 percent, or 43 million, to hit 220 million users worldwide. And while Hotmail remains the global leader with 327 million users globally, Google Gmail and Yahoo Mail have eaten away at its dominance, as Hotmail's user tally was down 27 million, or 8 percent, from between 2010 and 2011.

Top Contacts

Another new feature is in Yahoo Mail is message and contact prioritization. Yahoo Mail prioritizes messages and contacts that matter most to users, meaning when users want to compose an IM, SMS or e-mail message the most frequent contacts and lists surface first. The list of top contacts in Yahoo Mail is shown here.

Additionally, users can chat with Facebook friends alongside Windows Live and Yahoo Messenger contacts and view all past IM and text conversations directly from their Yahoo Mail account.

Quick Reply

The new Yahoo Mail adds a host of social networking capabilities, which let users respond to messages from Facebook, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Mail and other Webmail providers, including Google Gmail, using a quick reply bar (shown here). Yahoo has also added the ability to view and share notifications and updates from Twitter, Facebook and Zynga from within a new Updates tab.

Another new feature is increased security and phishing protection, Yahoo said.

In-Line Photo Viewing

Yahoo Mail has added the ability to see photo slideshows and video directly from the Yahoo Mail inbox. The In-Line Photo Viewing feature is shown here.

"Now you don't have to leave your Inbox to check out those photos and videos that friends and family send your way via Flickr, Picasa and YouTube," Yahoo said.

App Access

Along with In-Line Photo Viewing (shown here with a different screen) Yahoo Mail also now lets users leverage applications from their inboxes. For example, users can track online orders with an All My Purchases app, use an Unsubscriber app to stop receiving unwanted newsletters, and send large files using Attach Large Files by YouSendIt.