Advertisement
  1. SEJ
  2.  ⋅ 
  3. SEO

My Yahoo! Updates With GMail Integration & New Modules

My Yahoo! Updates With GMail Integration & New Modules

My Yahoo! has gone through another series of updates to their beta offering today, allowing users to preview their GMail and POP Mail accounts on My Yahoo.

Their My Yahoo! POP Mail module allows users to preview email from any mail account (Yahoo! or non-Yahoo!) that supports POP Mail. The GMail module allows users to preview their messages and also click on links in the module to go directly to the Google GMail interface. This is nice for users like me who prefer GMail to Yahoo Mail, but still use My Yahoo! as my start page for Yahoo! Sports, Finance and other Yahoo offerings.

My Yahoo GMail

GMail on My Yahoo

The ability to preview GMail on My Yahoo also gives Yahoo more of a stickiness factor and less reason for users to leave the My Yahoo panel page. It should also give Yahoo an idea of the amount of Yahoo users who prefer GMail over Yahoo Mail, or use both webmail applications based upon the amount of GMail modules installed on My Yahoo.

“Yahoo!’s increasingly working to make our services open, put customers first and keep Yahoo! as one of the Internet’s most relevant and dynamic destinations on the Web,” a Yahoo spokesperson told Search Engine Journal. “With the new My Yahoo! beta, we’re focused on making personalization simple and giving people what they want at their fingertips. One of the ways we’re doing this is by giving users more email preview options for their start page, in addition to the great Yahoo! Mail preview module we’ve offered on My Yahoo! for many years.”

Kudos for Yahoo for this gutsy move, as it shows the company its outreaching its arms to more 3rd party powered capabilities (in a similar fashion to Pageflakes or NetVibes), even if that third party is their major competitor in Search and also a major threat in the media portal & user generated content are.

Besides, Yahoo Mail and Messenger are the fine threads which hold the Yahoo network together. By allowing Yahoo users to import or preview GMail in their Yahoo pages, is Yahoo admitting defeat to Google?

Probably not, as it seems like more of a reality check that GMail is widely used, and perhaps preferred over Yahoo Mail.

In addition, Yahoo has also updated its Yahoo! Sports Scoreboard module, weather and Yahoo! Shopping modules:

  • The Yahoo! Scoreboard module lets people get more of their favorite sports updates in less space on their page. Inline editing allows you to quickly find the sports and teams you’re most interested in, and easily configure the module without leaving your start page. Plus, the module intelligently hides sports when they’re off-season to save space.
  • The Yahoo! Weather module has also been streamlined to take up less space on your page, with updated theme-ing elements that show the weather and time of day (day/night) of the default city.
  • Our updated Yahoo! Shopping module lets you filter products by type, and search for products (and see results) all without leaving your My Yahoo! page

Yahoo says that My Yahoo! will continue to add many new features over the coming months and they are interested in hearing what users think as we evolve the beta. To accompany the updates and two way communication, Yahoo has also launched the My Yahoo! Beta blog, where users can check in for future updates from My Yahoo!.

Category SEO
ADVERTISEMENT
SEJ STAFF Loren Baker Founder at Foundation Digital

Loren Baker is the Founder of SEJ, an Advisor at Alpha Brand Media and runs Foundation Digital, a digital marketing ...

My Yahoo! Updates With GMail Integration & New Modules

Subscribe To Our Newsletter.

Conquer your day with daily search marketing news.