Only 25% of Yahoo Staff "Eat Their Own Dog Food"

nk497 writes "Only 25% of Yahoo staff have obeyed the company's request to 'eat their own dog food' and switch to Yahoo Mail, a colorful internal memo has revealed. The leaked email, acquired by All Things Digital, implores staff to move over to the corporate version of Yahoo's webmail system, gently lambasting staff who refuse to part with Microsoft Outlook. The message goes on to take a swipe at what appears to be Yahoo employees' preferred mail client, Microsoft Outlook, describing it as 'anachronism of the now defunct 90s PC era, a pre-web program written at a time when NT Server terrorized the data center landscape with the confidence of a T-Rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents who fully bought into the illusion of their son's utter uniqueness because the big-mouthed, tiny-armed monster infant could mimic the gestures of The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl.'"

Comments

Wagging the dog.

[DoofusOfDeath]

Another reasonable approach from might be to task, "How does our service need to change, in order for our own employees to want to use it?"

Re:Wagging the dog.

[game kid]

Expecting "reasonable" from Marissa Mayer's Yahoo is like expecting "class 1 laser emission" from Marisa Kirisame's Master Spark.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[Anonymous Coward]

Another reasonable approach from might be to task, "How does our service need to change, in order for our own employees to want to use it?"

The more appropriate phrase in this case should be: "Eat Their Own Dog Poo".

Re:Wagging the dog.

[sonamchauhan]

Only dogs do that!

Re:Wagging the dog.

[Darinbob]

Why should the employees want to use it? "Eat your own dogfood" is a bad idea for your employees, unless you are creating a product intended for those types of employees. Is Yahoo Mail intended to be a corporate mail solution? If so then the employees should be encouraged to use it. If instead it is intended to be a general purpose web mail service, then it may be inappropriate for work.

Similarly, if my company made catheters I most certainly would object to be asked to use one while at work! Similarly, if I was creating a product intended for people with average to low technical aptitude (twitter, facebook) I would strongly object to be required to actually use that product all the time (I'd use it for testing purposes only). If I was at Google I would strenuously object to doing all my documentation by using Google Docs, or read mail via Google Mail, even if I was working on those products to make them better.

People are not cookie cutter clones!

Re:Wagging the dog.

[Enry]

Google is intending to have their products used by companies that pay for the services. If Google Docs isn't good enough for internal Google employees to use, how can they expect paying customers to be happy with the same kind of service? I can see a section of users with multiple e-mail clients to keep an eye on the competition, but I don't think it would make 75% of employees.

What Yahoo(!) should really be asking is: what is it about Outlook that keeps people using it?

Re:Wagging the dog.

[Dahamma]

Actually, usually. Most dogs hate their own dog poo.

But they do love cat poo. Which in fact is probably a more apt analogy, anyway, because the new Yahoo Mail interface looks like they ate Gmail, had horrible indigestion, and then crapped out something vaguely resembling it.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[abirdman]

Bravo. Very well said. I wonder why using specific software is so often compared to a religious choice-- after conversion to PHP, Oracle, jquery, .NET, whatever, then no other software can be used or contemplated. Bah. Every paged email client, like Yahoo, gmail, or even Outlook's web client, is a dog for managing any more than a screenful of emails at a time.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[SJHillman]

My dog will eat any dog or cat poo except for his own.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[asmkm22]

As the article points out, the memo is encouraging the employees to use the "corporate version" of yahoo's mail client.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[Bite The Pillow]

Rtfs, they are the audience. Corporate version.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[su5so10]

I work at Google and I've never seen anyone here use anything besides gmail for corporate mail.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[Eskarel]

Well based on the memo it might be a good start to recognise that people don't really want to use web based tools for core tasks, particularly event based ones like e-mail. Webmail if fine and dandy for "check it once a day" type of e-mail communication, but corporate e-mail simply isn't that.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[DMUTPeregrine]

Google docs is fine for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. It's not a replacement for notepad, and you can't easily stick google docs documents into your version control system with the code they document.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[Anonymous Coward]

>My dog will eat any dog or cat poo except for his own.

>Moderation: +1 Informative

You people crack me the fuck up.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[msobkow]

The current incarnation of the Yahoo WebMail service is the worst webmail interface I've ever used. I don't blame the employees for avoiding it like the plague -- and I've had my Yahoo account for around a decade. This latest version is a serious step backwards. The icons make no sense, there are "hidden" popup activation areas all over the place, and it's uglier than sin.

I don't know what their "usability" department has been doing, but it sure as hell isn't researching what people might actually want in a webmail interface.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[rtb61]

As always force of habit is the major driver to keep using existing products. Especially considering M$ Outlook was better known as M$ Lookout for routine failures and data loss in the nineties, it is rather more reliable now. Getting accustomed to all the features of a calendering and scheduling program takes a reasonable effort, especially if you really want to make full use of it, unless there is a major reason to change, why would you.

The other perspective is, force your employees to use you deficient product and they will work at reducing those deficiencies and make a better product available to your customers.

Calendering and scheduling is in transition as it is disappearing as a PC or notebook program and shifting to being a smartphone only program, for obvious reasons. There is still server side functions but the big US server side companies have a real permanent taint of the NSA/CIA hanging over them now and as such, local files are going to become much more popular again.

Even US security software is going to come under some serious review, after all fifty thousand hacked networks and not one squeak from any, and I repeat not any, US in-security software and we can all guess exactly why. US servers, US software are all going to become don't touch.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[ahabswhale]

I've used Outlook nearly my entire career and I don't see anything about it that makes it especially well suited to corporate use (at least as a user). In fact, I've never enjoyed using it. It's a mediocre product companies seem to use for the simple reason that nobody is going to get fired for picking Outlook. My guess is that these employees are just used to it and people hate change. I've never worked with anyone that's ever praised Outlook.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[phantomfive]

She must be doing something right. Suddenly every news outlet seems to have a spy trying to figure out what the company is doing, and we keep getting Slashdot articles about Yahoo. From a sheer publicity perspective, she's a genius (or the board is a genius for choosing her).

Re:Wagging the dog.

[turp182]

"section of users with multiple e-mail clients to keep an eye on the competition"

Lotus Notes baby!!!! (and Outlook)

Re:Wagging the dog.

[Dahamma]

If my dog digs a hole in the yard, I sometimes shovel some of his poo in before filling it. Works pretty well, he doesn't want to go near it (otherwise he just considers it a game and digs the hole back up). I used to throw in some cayenne pepper, but now I think he's acquired a taste for that...

Re:Wagging the dog.

[Anonymous Coward]

Take outlook away, and see if anyone praises it. The killer app is not outlook, it is outlook + calendar integration, which is superior to all.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[red crab]

Really? I thought Yahoo! has always been in news, even before Mayers took over it, always for the wrong reasons; this piece of news being no exception.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[phantomfive]

Yeah, why does Yahoo manage to get in the news so much? It's not like they are the only company that doesn't "eat their own dog food."

Re:Wagging the dog.

[Charliemopps]

Another reasonable approach from might be to task, "How does our service need to change, in order for our own employees to want to use it?"

But they're right. The fact that most corporations STILL use outlook has more to do with the psychology of the staff than the actual utility of the application. Outlook sucks ass compared to even the most rudimentary webmail options out there. You have to pay for outlook! Yet any competent IT shop should be able to implement just about any open source web based mail app in a matter of weeks. Why pay millions to Microsoft when there are Free, better alternatives.

Lastly, maybe shes thinks that her staff will never be able to improve their software if they are not actually using it.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[swillden]

I work at Google and I've never seen anyone here use anything besides gmail for corporate mail.

I know one who uses EMACS (Gnus, I think) for e-mail, but she's hardcore. And she still uses the web UI for many tasks.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[PopeRatzo]

Yeah, why does Yahoo manage to get in the news so much?

Because they've got a lot of well-paid people whose job it is to get them in the news.

Welcome to the Press Release News Cycle.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[jbolden]

Funny enough I'm a very long time Yahoo mail user but I almost always use it with a rich client. What's good about Outlook:

a) Integrated calendars
b) Multiple integrated email accounts
c) Task management built in
d) Note taking built in

Re:Wagging the dog.

[Luckyo]

That's probably because gmail supports outlook, just tell it to fetch your email from pop.gmail.com:995 and you're golden.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[phantomfive]

Does Yahoo really have a better publicity team than other companies?

Re:Wagging the dog.

[Enry]

I don't use Outlook as a VCS either.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[PopeRatzo]

They're number 2, so they try harder.

(I don't know if you're old enough to get the reference).

Re:Wagging the dog.

[phantomfive]

I'm so young, can't you tell by my girlish figure? But Yahoo isn't number 2.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[LurkerXXX]

It's because everyone is so suprised they are still alive, and wondering what they are doing to make enough money to live.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[skids]

I've generally found the people who make more than occasional use of calandering features are the most unproductive ones. I could entirely live without calandering myself.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[HJED]

Because checking your email through a browser is far less efficient and harder to use then using a desktop client (especially with imap). Personally I use Thuderbird (which is missing features for corporate use)

Re:Wagging the dog.

[splorp!]

Your dog craps both dog and cat poop? Weird...

Re:Wagging the dog.

[TheSeatOfMyPants]

It wasn't merely "Lookout," it was "Look out!!!" Have to give it the proper sense of urgent warning against complete catastrophe, you know.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[davester666]

They are number 1 then?

Really, it's a tossup between whether they are piss or shit.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[phantomfive]

They are number 1 then?

No.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[93 Escort Wagon]

I'm old - I remember the Avis commercials.

But does Marissa?

Re:Wagging the dog.

[plover]

I've been told it's their ad platform that's making them their money. About the only thing I regularly use Yahoo! for is their OpenID services, which I really like for three main reasons: they're not Microsoft, they're not Apple, and they're not Google.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[plover]

Maybe they don't have that kind of time.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[ceoyoyo]

It's a native app instead of a shitty web app?

Outlook has to be the crappiest native mail client, but it's still a native app.

On the other hand, it could just be because Yahoo mail manages to be even worse. A guy at work today was just swearing at his yahoo mail giving another "server not available" error this morning. I'd ditch it too.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[Electricity Likes Me]

Worth noting is I don't know of any one who's suitably solved all of these cross-platform yet either.

I [i]still[/i] can't have calendar events and tasks live side-by-side in Google Calendar, nor a decent Tasks app on my phone (iOS, Android, any platform pretty much). Same story with notes and synchronizing them anywhere useful.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[bemymonkey]

" Calendering and scheduling is in transition as it is disappearing as a PC or notebook program and shifting to being a smartphone only program, for obvious reasons. "

Is this why smartphone calendar apps still can't set repeat patterns more complex than X weekdays every week? Take Google Calendar, for instance - the Android version only allows about a quarter of the repeat patterns available in the online version.

Yes, the smartphone is increasingly important for calendar use, but any time you're entering a whole bunch of data at once, you're not going to want to do it on your smartphone...

Re:Wagging the dog.

[firex726]

They hardly need spies to get copies of memos which talk about "eating their own dog food" to employees.
It'd be news if such a memo wasn't forwarded around within seconds of being read.

It's less about wanting to know what is being done right, and more about the morbid curiosity of watching a train wreck happen.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[rtb61]

Entering a whole bunch of data has very little to do with keeping a whole bunch of data. So remote software for a PC to enter and edit the contents of a smartphone either via wireless or USB would be very useful, in the case of calendering being able to carry it with you 24/7 makes it far more worthwhile and keeping a copy of the PC redundant other than as backup up or the main data entry point.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[antdude]

How about your poo?

Re:Wagging the dog.

[mwvdlee]

For startes, having a relatively easy way to migrate is probably key to having people switch.
Some people value having a history of emails to reference and search when needed.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[bickerdyke]

perhaps. but those companies usually produce ACTUAL dog food.

I've yet to see a car company that use their competitors cars as company cars or don't encourage employees into buying them with huge discounts

Re: Wagging the dog.

[bickerdyke]

Why would you want to use VBA if you could use Apps Script instead?

(Yes, Google Docs HAs a built in scripting language, too)

Re:Wagging the dog.

[bickerdyke]

Same goes for MS Office.

Googel Docs at least has a built in version history and document sharing, so you even get the (very) basic VCS for free.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[bickerdyke]

That was my line of thought until I started to use GMail. First, as an option when I was not on my desktop machine. But I got used to it and didn't re-install my mail client at the next windows re-install. Don't miss one till today.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[TheRaven64]

How do you know if your employees like it if they don't use it? It's a big part of the reason for this kind of mandate: you have a large pool of people internally who can tell you if the product sucks, but only if they actually use it.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[TheRaven64]

MS Office also has change tracking and can show you who made which changes to a document. It works well, except if you have more than one document, in which case tying versions together is very hard. Oh, and there's no merging support, so you can't have two people independently editing a document. Oh, and you can't split documents up for different people to work on different sections, because then cross-references break. But that's probably okay, because no enterprise actually has more than one employee or one document....

Re:Wagging the dog.

[xaxa]

I use Thunderbird (unofficially) at work. It has instant full-text searching through all emails, and a great search interface. It's impressed a few colleagues, who are all using Outlook.

When I installed it, I expected nothing to have changed since I'd last used it properly, in about 2008, and was pleasantly surprised.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[bickerdyke]

Yes. It would work well if the standard operating procedure wouldn't be mailing copies of documents around - because &%$&"!-Outlook it's so easy to do with Outlook! Thatnks for the integration....

Re: Wagging the dog.

[jsepeta]

it's as if Outlook stabbed Yahoo Mail to death and left a bloody glove at the scene of the crime. I especially like the typos and the fact that the CIO admits there's still things that Outlook does better, so you can use it for 30 seconds. Who has time to keep swapping between programs just because the CIO is butthurt? deliver a better product that employees Want to use.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[Chickenlips]

Actually, Yahoo's news section is the most popular in the U.S., followed by CNN. It has been since before Mayer took over.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=247205097

Re:Wagging the dog.

[Geeky]

I'm using Wunderlist for tasks and Evernote for notes, but I'm happy to use separate applications for each. The gmail calendar is good enough for me as I don't get out much :)

Re:Wagging the dog.

[Talderas]

The OEM car manufacturers certainly do offer a discount and it's not just to their employees. They also offer it to a number of their suppliers and customers.

The better question is why would I buy a new car with the OEM discount when I could just get a 1 year old used car that's cheaper than what I would get a new one for?

The best part is how employees who, for example, drive a Ford to work at GM get treated as second class citizens by union members.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[AvitarX]

The spreadsheet is pretty weak too, I use it for simple things, especially when the sharing is useful (like expense reports), but it has frustrations even then. For example, when inserting a row it doesn't extend formulas to said row, and I've not found a way to copy a value from a cell that is the result of a formula.

Re: Wagging the dog.

[PopeRatzo]

Or, it's as if Outlook put a hand axe into the forehead of Yahoo Mail and then put it's head on a pike, and now the Princess Mayer is saying "Winter is coming" while Yahoo employees dally with the daughters of Lord Ballmer in the upstairs rooms of Silicon Valley ale houses.

Or something.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[nine-times]

Well of course, it may be that you can't get a good answer to that question until your employees use it enough to formulate complaints.

One of the key factors in the idea of "eating your own dog food" is to be responsive to feedback from those eating the dog food. The idea is that, if you're using your own product then you have both a better understanding of what needs to be changed and a greater motivation to change it. The problem with some "eat your own dog food situations" is sometimes the directive down from the boss is not "eat our own dog food and tell us how to improve it," but instead "eat our own dog food and you had better like it!"

Re:Wagging the dog.

[unixisc]

Another reasonable approach from might be to task, "How does our service need to change, in order for our own employees to want to use it?"

Precisely!!! Every other service has a seamless way to let e-mail clients work w/ them - gmail, aol, live/hotmail; it's only Yahoo! that makes it difficult. If they just made Yahoo work smoothly w/ Outlook/Thunderbird/____, things would be so much easier.

One thing they could try out - making Yahoo! something that would allow people to recall mails. That's a neat feature in every employer of mine that had MS Exchange.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[unixisc]

I'm not exactly following this argument. People can use Gmail on Outlook or Thunderbird - one just has to configure it initially - Thunderbird tends to self configure. One issue w/ Yahoo! mail is that it is POP only, not IMAP, so that one could risk all the mails being stuck on one device, instead of being on the server for any.

In other words, it's apples vs pineapples. One is an e-mail client software, while another is a webmail service. The 2 can be used w/ each other - that's what I do all the time. On Thunderbird, I use 5-6 e-mails that I have and always know what's going on w/o having to open browsers & logging into different tabs.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[PrimaryConsult]

I used to not care about the calendar, but if you end up involved with a lot of projects, it's impossible to live without.

As for occasional versus extensive use of the calendar, people who don't block of time they're out of the office often get meetings scheduled while they're out. And then penalized for missing the meetings. Not official penalization, more "we made this decision about changes that are technically in your area but since you were not at the meeting we didn't think you'd mind. It's already been green lit by management, have fun!"

Re:Wagging the dog.

[mcgrew]

I use them too, and I couldn't agree with you more. Their web interface is so bad I don't check my mail with it, I use my phone. Half the emails I get I can't read in their web interface without a god damned horizontal scroll with every line.

I should set up Thunderbird or something on the notebook.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[swillden]

The AC's point is important, though: the fact is that the webmail interface is so good that essentially all Googlers use it, even though it's easy to use something else.

Pretty much everyone just keeps gmail tab open all the time, usually pinned.

Re:Wagging the dog.

[swillden]

I know one who uses EMACS

but she's hardcore

How was this not marked troll?

Because it's not the slightest bit trollish?

Web Apps

[the eric conspiracy]

Aren't the best solution to everything.

Re:Web Apps

[Arker]

Very true.

And while Outlook is very near worst of breed for email - yahoo webmail is not just webmail, it's probably the worst webmail available.

I dont blame their employees for not wanting to use it, I have used a yahoo email since just after they first went online, but I dont even bother log into it anymore after the last batch of forced regressions involved in their redesign.

On the one hand, if they dont use it, it obviously will never be fixed. They clearly dont listen to customer feedback in any way shape or means. But then again, why would they listen to their employee feedback either?

More than likely a lot of those employees actually DID respond to the request to eat that dogfood, gave it a try, found out it tastes as bad as it looks and is unlikly to ever be fixed no matter what the employee feedback - and therefore rationally went back to Outlook.

Re:Web Apps

[InsightfulPlusTwo]

Yeah, why doesn't Yahoo! just make some desktop client software that integrates with their WebMail and has Outlook-style features?

People use outlook?

[gijoel]

I think most of Yahoo's problems stem from the fact that the hire programmers that use Outlook?

Re:People use outlook?

[Darinbob]

Most companies essentially mandate the use of Outlook and have MS Exchange as their back end.

As bad as Outlook is, it's still better than any webmail solution.

Re:People use outlook?

[su5so10]

Most companies... except for IBM which mandates Lotus Notes. Which is the worst email program I've ever used (outside of BSD Mail).

Re:People use outlook?

[sexconker]

I think most of Yahoo's problems stem from the fact that the hire programmers that use Outlook?

Outlook is terrible.
It's still leaps and bounds better than any other option for a workplace.

Re:People use outlook?

[DeathElk]

Ballmer, shut the fuck up. You're meant to be enjoying retirement.

Re:People use outlook?

[Anonymous Coward]

by sexconker (1179573) Foe of a Friend on Tuesday November 26, 2013 @10:24AM (#45521559)

I think most of Yahoo's problems stem from the fact that the hire programmers that use Outlook?

Outlook is terrible.

It's still leaps and bounds better Ihan any other option for a workplace.

by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 26, 2013 @09:41AM (#45521113)

Yes, tons of people use Outlook. It's leaps and bounds better than Yahoo mail or any duct-taped together, freetard solution.

Trolling as AC as well, I see?

Re:People use outlook?

[hairyfish]

I'll go one further and say Exchange/Outlook is better than anything other app in it's class. I always hear people bashing Exchange/Outlook in here, but I never hear anyone say product x does it better. For Enterprise Email/Contacts/Tasks/Calendar/Collaboration the closest product is Lotus Notes and that truly sucks arse. So before you label me a shill, I'd like to hear about your replacement candidate. I have no connection to MS, I've just been down that path of finding competition and found nothing but donkeys (in this space).

Re:People use outlook?

[King_TJ]

Yeah, this is unfortunately quite true.

Our company would LOVE to migrate everyone away from Outlook and Exchange for multiple reasons. First and foremost, it encourages the use of the email system as an all purpose filing system, yet turns around and imposes severe limits on the number of objects it can handle before performance degrades and functions simply quit working properly. (I believe the speed and memory capacity of the client have some bearing on what the limit is for a particular user, but I've often heard recommendations to keep it under 1,000 or so objects per folder. That may sound like a lot until you realize people often have more than that in their Outlook calendar alone, if they've worked for the company for 4 or 5 years and never thought to try to delete any scheduled appointments or entries that happened in the past. Not only that, but recurring entries, such as "schedule my staff meeting every Wednesday at 1PM through the end of 2015" create separate entries for EACH occurrence!)

Regardless, there's really not much of anything out there that's provably better. Zimbra looks interesting as a possible web-based alternative? But mostly, people really like all of this data stored (or at least cached) locally on the computer running the client, for fast access and ability to work with everything even when offline. Combine that with the functionality Outlook/Exchange provides -- and it's a tall order to match or beat it with another product.

Re:People use outlook?

[bickerdyke]

Which makes sense. In this combination!

Re:People use outlook?

[xaxa]

Ah, that probably explains why Outlook at work hangs for two minutes after I load it. Thank you! I had installed Thunderbird in frustration (which is better than the version of Outlook we use, it has instant full-text search) and was using my phone for managing appointments.

Kolab and the associated KDE clients are decent, but it's been a long time since I tried them out properly. I hadn't heard of Zimbra. (This stuff is not my area at all.)

Re:People use outlook?

[ulricr]

I'm always baffled when people complain that Outlook is slow. The corporate exchange server I am connected to is not even in the same country as I am. And outlook starts in about 7 seconds in a cool boot (ho often do you that, once a week?). That's still too long, but it's not 2 minutes. My mail is all on the server, no local .ost file. (probably the same for you too, since you switched to an (no longer developed afaik) imap client) But there are some crazy corporate spyware/management stuff that corporation install on our PCs that slow things down, and for sure "going rogue" and using another mail client that is not IT-managed works around that.

Re:People use outlook?

[Lorens]

TFA quotes the e-mail:

In the rare case you do need Outlook, like adding a delegate for your calendar, you can still fire up Outlook for 30 seconds.

Is that feature so important that it has to mentioned? It certainly doesn't seem like it should be months of work to add it to the in-house webmail client if Outlook can do it! I'd certainly press for having the feature added to the in-house solution *before* sending out an e-mail lambasting employees for not using it!

What I find really funny is that Zimbra belonged to Yahoo, and Zimbra definitely can add a delegate to a calendar.

Re:People use outlook?

[Flere Imsaho]

Can confirm. Source: Notes user :-(

Re:People use outlook?

[rdnetto]

What are your thoughts on KDE Kolab?

Re:People use outlook?

[shutdown -p now]

yet turns around and imposes severe limits on the number of objects it can handle before performance degrades and functions simply quit working properly. (I believe the speed and memory capacity of the client have some bearing on what the limit is for a particular user, but I've often heard recommendations to keep it under 1,000 or so objects per folder.

I'm not sure which version you're using, but I haven't noticed anything of a kind with Outlook 2010 or 2013 (and whatever Exchange is running on the server side), and I have an archive of email going back 5 years, for a total of 10 Gb. And while I also have plenty of folders, vast majority of them certainly have well in excess of 1k objects in them.

What the hell is IN that dogfood?

[themushroom]

when NT Server terrorized the data center landscape with the confidence of a T-Rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents who fully bought into the illusion of their son's utter uniqueness because the big-mouthed, tiny-armed monster infant could mimic the gestures of The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl.

I think that dogfood's gone bad and grown some mushrooms. Also, how does a T-Rex imitate a Pterodactyl... flapping its little arms vainly?

Rawr.

Re:What the hell is IN that dogfood?

[rk]

I read that all and in my mind filled in the words: "Still better than Yahoo web mail." Like someone else said here, instead of mandating the employees switch, they might want to spend a little time finding out why their employees won't, because unlike her Yahoo minions, Mayer can't tell anyone else what email client to use.

Re:What the hell is IN that dogfood?

[PPH]

Never mix your metaphors before they've hatched.

Re:What the hell is IN that dogfood?

[ApplePy]

Mixing metaphors is like beating dead horses into plowshares. Don't do it.

Re:What the hell is IN that dogfood?

[the_olo]

when NT Server terrorized the data center landscape with the confidence of a T-Rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents who fully bought into the illusion of their son's utter uniqueness because the big-mouthed, tiny-armed monster infant could mimic the gestures of The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl.

I think that dogfood's gone bad and grown some mushrooms. Also, how does a T-Rex imitate a Pterodactyl... flapping its little arms vainly?

I think that now we can see clearly, where ~BadAnalogyGuy has gone to...

Calendars

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Yahoo mail do calendaring and task management? Does it do it well? That's the killer app for businesses with Outlook.

Re:Calendars

[Chas]

Also, can you easily sync the calendar and contacts to your phone the way you can with Outlook?

*Note: I said EASILY! So your 75-step "here's how you do'er" can be consigned to the circular file.*

Personally, I don't use Outlook myself. I don't care for the client.
However, I only use webmail when I don't have access to my phone or one of my computers (see "seldom, if ever").

Also, please tell me how I peruse my old e-mail when my internet connection goes down or the provider has a service outage for a webmail app.

As functional as webmail and web-office apps are, they're still little more than toys.

Re:Calendars

[skids]

Also, please tell me how I peruse my old e-mail when my internet connection goes down or the provider has a service outage for a webmail app.

I have a hard enough time doing that in outook when the network is up and running smoothly.

Seriously, 10 minutes to search an inbox with just a few tens of thousands of emails in it? I pretty much have to keep both outlook and OWA open so I can use each to work around the serious deficiencies of the other.

Re:Calendars

[Chas]

Well, 10,000-to-90,000+ e-mails?
Yeah, I can see that taking time.
Flat-filing it takes more time due to extensive disk access.
Reducing it to SQL and blobs takes more time due to query limits for performance's-sake.
Think about it.

An average e-mail is somewhere between 25KB and 75KB.
That works out to about 2300-7000 words in plaintext.
Now think about 20,000 of them in a single inbox.
Now think about 80,000 of them in a single inbox.

This is why users of solutions like Outlook are encouraged to use archiving.

Re:Calendars

[SpzToid]

I use google calendar and gmail, (and Google Domains for Business, grandfather-style for free, along with my own domain). My Nokia N9 uses the Exchange API for syncing, to compliment the browser interfaces for these services.

Meeting notifications and confirmations just work, no matter which device is being used.

One might consider the privacy issues, but for ease and reliability, google is doing it for me, free.

Re:Calendars

[xaxa]

I only have 2500 emails in my Exchange inbox, but found Outlook was struggling -- possibly we have an old version, I'm not sure.

I like Thunderbird's Full Text Search, and now use Thunderbird for 95% of the emails I send. It has a threaded email view, a bit like GMail, which I also prefer. I still use Outlook (or my phone) for my calendar.

I don't know how it would cope with 10,000s of emails. The initial import would take a while.

Re:Calendars

[skids]

This is why users of solutions like Outlook are encouraged to use archiving.

Sooooo 80's. I want my mail client to save me work, not create busywork for me.

Microsoft Outlook is like capitalism

[Qzukk]

The worst possible email client, except for all the rest.

Re:Microsoft Outlook is like capitalism

[Swampash]

Democracy.

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/364.html

Re:Microsoft Outlook is like capitalism

[laederkeps]

Mutt.
All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less.

Re:Microsoft Outlook is like capitalism

[mcgrew]

The first five words were accurate. I've used a lot of different email clients and we're stuck with Outlook at work now. I fucking hate it. Of all the email clients I've used, IMO Outlook is the worst, PERIOD.

I miss the Novell client.

But it's still better than Yahoo webmail. Any dedicated email client is better than webmail.

web mail for enterprise?

[Joe_Dragon]

web mail for enterprise?

Re:web mail for enterprise?

[Ralph Wiggam]

Gmail has been pretty successful.

Re:web mail for enterprise?

[silas_moeckel]

So is outlook for that matter. Outlook has inertia piles of it, Plenty of companies rolled it out as there first email and people have never know anything else.

Re:web mail for enterprise?

[Anonymous Coward]

outlook has many problems, but there currently isn't a better solution in the market in either proprietary or free software that is better. when combined with exchange the calendaring and scheduling plus office integration make far and away the best solution in the market, which is sad because it really does have so many shortcomings.

Re:web mail for enterprise?

[Lifyre]

I work as support for a large number of small businesses and honestly it doesn't work very well there either. Every company we've worked with that had more than 5 people weren't happy with it for one reason or another. A very very large reason is having to have an internet connection unless you use a third party app (such as Outlook) or Chrome.

Re:web mail for enterprise?

[su5so10]

One area where gmail is infinitely better than Outlook is search speed. Which is important in an enterprise setting, e.g. when trying to find details about design discussions from months ago.

Re:web mail for enterprise?

[Krishnoid]

'Outlook Web Access', aka Microsoft Exchange's web front-end, can provide much better search speed than the desktop client if the Exchange server is sufficiently powerful.

Re:web mail for enterprise?

[laffer1]

I work at the University of Michigan and we use Gmail and Google apps. I'm not a big Gmail fan, but it's actually not bad for business use.

There are still people trying to use outlook as their client, but most people prefer Gmail now. It can work for large organizations.

Re:web mail for enterprise?

[bickerdyke]

The sad thing is, many people think of it as a good (if not the only) EMAIL client, just it is the best (and probably indeed only) Exchange client.

It makes sense

[pmontra]

Maybe 75% of Yahoo's workforce want to work for another company.
Anyway, I understand why they should mandate using their own mail application and search engine. They'll discover quickly if those products hurt and they have an incentive to make them better.

Re:It makes sense

[Obfuscant]

They'll discover quickly that those products hurt and they have an incentive to make them better.

FTFY. Yahoo mail. Abysmal.

Every time I go there on the web, I am told to upgrade to a Firefox that has been optimized for Yahoo, and then I get told to pick a new theme. Every damn time.

At least the quality is consistently 'neo', both for groups and email.

Re:It makes sense

[locopuyo]

I use Opera 12 and it briefly flashes the your browser is not supported before continuing. It also used to repeatedly ask me to choose a theme until I chose a theme using the yahoo mail app on my phone.
Yahoo mail used to be good and I actually preferred it over gmail until about 2 years ago. Every update it seems to get worse. There are tons of bugs that should have been found with any decent QA process.

cat turds are dogfood, according to many dogs

[themushroom]

Next analogy down the pike: Marissa in the corner, licking her own balls.

Re:cat turds are dogfood, according to many dogs

[steelfood]

Wait what? Doesn't that make Yahoo the cat that laid the turd? Cats aren't particularly known for licking their own or others balls, especially not for the hell of it. They certainly do lick each other though.

Mail?

[JBMcB]

I'm sure the employee's reaction was the same as everyone else's: Yahoo still has email?

Re:Mail?

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually use Yahoo Mail and have done for over ten years. It's always seemed like a good idea to me since I'll never use Yahoo for anything else (what else do they really do anyway?) while if I were to use something like GMail they'd be cross-referencing my emails with my searching habits with my Youtube viewing history and general browsing habits from the many many websites that use Google Ads.

Better to spread my info around into (relatively) remote morsels so that no one organisation knows everything about me.

Re:Mail?

[chromas]

They were surprised to find out Yahoo is still around and that they work there.

Re:Mail?

[turp182]

My primary personal email has been a Yahoo account since sometime in 2000. Everyone I know has it, it is de facto (correct spelling anyone? a suggestion was "ed-facto").

I take the changes in stride, I only wish that the freaking mail item list was always associated with Arrow-Up/Arrow-Down. Am I always wanting to see my Sent Items or Deleted Items folders???

Re:Mail?

[m2]

Yes, Yahoo still has an email thing. I know exactly one person who still uses it. And pays for it.

When reading the summary, I was sure that this:

gently lambasting staff who refuse to part with Microsoft Outlook

... was going to read "gently lambasting staff who refuse to part with Gmail" and Yahoo was imploring their employees to switch to Yahoo! mail. As bad as Yahoo's mail system is, Outlook is worse. I figure 75% of Yahoo is sales people.

Re:Mail?

[Chryana]

Same situation here, and for the same reasons. I access my mail almost exclusively by IMAP in Thunderbird, so there would be no difference in the user interface if I switched to GMail (Plus, the security is better: Yahoo! still doesn't in this day and age support https access to its web interface. Terrible).

Re:Mail?

[mcgrew]

I can't agree. I agree that Outlook is the worst mail client I've ever used, but Yahoo webmail sucks worse. I got it over a decade ago to have a stable email address. I read my mail on the phone because Yahoo's interface won't let me read a lot of mail without side scrolling with every line on the computer. FAR worse than anything MS's client does. But I will be glad when I don't have to use Outlook next February when I retire (but more glad I'll be through with Access).

I should just install Thunderbird (but I should install kubuntu on the notebook, too).

Yahoo mail was recently ruined

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to love Yahoo, but they recently ruined it by removing the ability to have more than one message open at a time in separate tabs (there are no more tabs). They also now automatically thread all the emails with the same subject line, making it very difficult to know if you are replying with a lot of extra junk you don't want or not. You also cannot do something as simple as copying text or an address from one message to another (again, lack of tabs). I don't like their dog food anymore either.

Re:Yahoo mail was recently ruined

[firex726]

Same here, I hate how it's all been linked into some instant messaging format. And god forbid you get emails regularly with the same subject.

snooping

[KernelMuncher]

So does Yahoo just want to snoop on all their employees ? By making them use their own email client they could do exactly that.

Re:snooping

[xombo]

They already run their own Exchange servers to power Outlook. There's nothing stopping them from snooping on corporate e-mail, no matter how you go about accessing it.

The second half of that summary was

[Kardos]

verbal diarrhea. Is the submitter sick from eating dog food?

Yahoo Dogfood is Bing

[PaddyM]

What is the point of this? When I log in to yahoo email it takes forever to search because the bing search takes forever to load. If you type too quickly, you just see your whole inbox. So they criticize their employees to leave outlook and use Yahoo mail?

Not that outlook search is any better (can't find parts of a word), but this whole dogfood is serious. Maybe they should stop using Windows at work or using Office while their at it.

News for who?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Microsoft Outlook, describing it as 'anachronism of the now defunct 90s PC era, a pre-web program written at a time when NT Server terrorized the data center landscape with the confidence of a T-Rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents who fully bought into the illusion of their son's utter uniqueness because the big-mouthed, tiny-armed monster infant could mimic the gestures of The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl."

Individually the words make sense, but put them together and you can clearly see why Yahoo is where it is.

Re:News for who?

[firex726]

Yep, standard corporate buzzword speak for this kind of stuff.

When stuff like that gets sent out either the Exec is so full of themselves they think they are being clever, or their so ignorant they don't see how stupid it'll make them seem.

Right, Yahoo doesn't do search

[Animats]

Yahoo doesn't do search. They dumped the search engine years ago. Yahoo resells Bing, with Yahoo branding and ads.

Knowing what I know about corporate life...

[sootman]

... why do I suspect it'll be the managers who are the last to be dragged, kicking and screaming, from Outlook?

I use Yahoo mail and Outlook. Outlook definitely has its place, especially in a business. Tell me though, because I haven't looked: can Yahoo's calendar let you see everyone else's free time when inviting people to a meeting? As easily as Outlook does?

Re:Knowing what I know about corporate life...

[acoustix]

It can, if you have a proper calendar server set up. The problem is most places I've been don't or the end user doesn't click the button to do so because they don't know it is there and don't have that set up as the default view because they don't know they can.

So, in other words: No, not by default. Outlook doesn't require user knowledge to set it up in a corporate environment with Exchange. It just runs and you are able to see other people's calendars when setting up an appointment. That is a huge advantage.

Who here wants to switch to another?

[BringsApples]

Email is just fucking email, all we want is to get messages from other people and respond. But since the powers that be have had their focus on setting things up to be so different, it's a pain in the ass to move things over. As if it's like that by design, hmm go figure.

Re:Who here wants to switch to another?

[asmkm22]

I think the idea is that by using their own products, their employees are in a better position to know what needs to be changed or fixed. Which makes sense.

Re:Who here wants to switch to another?

[BringsApples]

You're right, but that's not the point I'm trying to make. I'm just saying that the point that the article seems to be trying to make, "no one wants to change to Yahoo" is moot because no one wants to change from anything else, to anything else.

Re:Who here wants to switch to another?

[asmkm22]

And if these weren't paid employees, I'd agree with you. There's all kinds of things that employees in all industries don't *want* to do but are encouraged to. At least this one is more lenient with things (other than Apple, where anything but Apple products pretty much got you fired).

Re:Who here wants to switch to another?

[roc97007]

I think you've hit on a major point. "Differentiation" is part of the problem. What the customer (in this case -- the Enterprise employee) wants is efficient access to email. Not ads, not cute graphics and sounds, not fancy colors or fancy guis, just to be able to pound through a pile of emails and easily save, reply forward, and send/receive attachments in some reasonably efficient fashion.

My mom was at one time sold on some dumb-ass email service called "incredimail", because it spoke to her and had cute animations and supported putting those sickening kitten graphics and rich flowery formatting that just looks like garbage on non-incredimail clients. It was a pain in the ass to communicate with her. She finally gave up on the tool because it was causing problems for her and for all her relatives, and I managed to transition her to Yahoo Mail. The point is, it took her awhile to realize that there is a price for all those cute little proprietary features. Now she still has to deal with a gooey interface, but at least it's more straightforward and plays better with others.

Re:Who here wants to switch to another?

[BringsApples]

Article:
Daaaamn, not even Yahoo employees want to use their email, it must suck.

Me: The point of this article is moot because it's got nothing to do with Yahoo's email sucking, it's that no one wants to change their email from where it is, and for a variety of reasons.

You: The article's point isn't moot because they get paid for working there. At least changing to Yahoo's email is optional unlike Apple.

You lost me. Why would their paycheck have any effect on them wanting to move their email to another carrier?

A more interesting move for Yahoo would be to only correspond to employees via a yahoo email account. That way everyone wins.

Re:Who here wants to switch to another?

[Bite The Pillow]

This is for business, not individuals. Business requires what Outlook offers because they grew up together. If its not easier to use for business it won't be used. Individual preference and migration inertia are irrelevant.
And its not just email. Calendars, ooo replies, org charts, room reservations, and more.

Re:Billion Dollar Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Webmail sucks. No PGP, no local copies of my emails, no proper integration between cal, mail, and tasks.

It pays to have equal functionality on the client side and the ability to work offline. The philosophy of micro-thin client and mega-fat server ignores this.

Re:Dinosaur Train!

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 (Gets the in-joke). Fistbump of solidarity, from one parent to another.

"Eat their own dog food?"

[PPH]

Clearly Marissa Mayer needs to study /b/ memes some more.

Obviously they can't find a decent alternative

[Trax3001BBS]

I don't know if YaHoo mail, Hotmail or Gmail is any good, I use Forte Agent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forté_Agent must copy and paste the é throws a loop.
and POP 3 my e-mail, everything to Gmail then to me. I use version Agent 1.93 (very old, very good).

I get no HTML mail, it's all in text unless I want to view it, I send no web beacons when
I read my mail. I send no it's been read replies.

It's the safest most secure e-mail system I've come across and been using it since Win 3.1.
None of my Email stays on a web service, and I have every email I've sent and received (for some reason).

Just saying YaHoo Pop 3 your email, you take the kool aide, yet they don't know of the outcome.
You use the YaHoo service but at your convince and in a secure fashion.

(Now I just hope Yahoo POP3's their Email, I got a Yahoo account when they were "Google" (before) but
never use it :} )

Re:Obviously they can't find a decent alternative

[Trax3001BBS]

I used Forte Agent, too. In 1995. To download pr0n and warez.

Yep, nothing has changed.

collect some requirements

[Dan667]

sheeze, how hard is it to realize your product does not do what people need and start a redesign project to go out and fix it?

domain specific software architecture or something ...

Right, but...

[roc97007]

> The message goes on to take a swipe at what appears to be Yahoo employees' preferred mail client, Microsoft Outlook, describing it as 'anachronism of the now defunct 90s PC era, a pre-web program written at a time when NT Server terrorized the data center landscape with the confidence of a T-Rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents who fully bought into the illusion of their son's utter uniqueness because the big-mouthed, tiny-armed monster infant could mimic the gestures of The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl.'

Um, ok... and they're right, if a little too colorful, and it doesn't even mention Office 365, which has all the disadvantages of Outlook plus most the disadvantages of internet-based email (see below).

One can legitimately rag on Outlook, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Yahoo Mail is an adequate replacement. It lags, both in response and in sending/receiving. It requires the internet. It's not well integrated. The phone app is annoying. I've read recently that you now have to have a Plus (paying) account in order to use pop3. Web mail in general is too "mousy". It takes way too long to burn through a bunch of emails and do various disparate things to them. Web mail is cute and colorful, and moderately easy to learn, but it's not efficient. My mom uses Yahoo Mail. So does my wife. It's a good email tool for non-technical people who don't do a lot of email.

Let me repeat that, because I think this is the crux of the issue. Yahoo mail is a good email tool for non-technical people who don't do a lot of email.

My non-work email is from a service that includes pop3 support for 1/10 the yearly cost of an ad-free Yahoo Mail Plus account. I can access it via the generic Android email app or pop the messages to a "fat client" on my home machine, which can easily be operated entirely from the keyboard. A web interface is provided for emergencies, so I can still access email in a browser if I don't have access to my home machine or my phone. I maintain a Yahoo email account because my family uses Yahoo Messenger, but I rarely visit it because the web interface is slow and clumsy.

So yeah, I can see Yahoo employees being stuck between a rock and a hard place -- Outlook and Yahoo Mail, neither of which are optimal. At least with Outlook, they can still read their currently spooled messages if they lose connection to the outside world. Not to mention, carpel tunnel in the mouse hand from trying to do real work in a webmail interface.

Conversely, if the company absolutely, draconically required Yahoo Mail only, and did not allow any other mail tool to be used on pain of dismissal, this may lead to the tool becoming much improved. In a year or three, it might even be adequate for the Enterprise. If Yahoo didn't go under first. Email is kinda important to the business...

Re:Webmail is for idiots; Outlook is for morons

[dyingtolive]

RMS, what are you doing? You told us you didn't use the internet!

Be Taken Seriously

[TechyImmigrant]

No one takes you seriously if you have a Yahoo email, even if you work for Yahoo.

The Yahoo staff need Eudora to get things done.

Re: Be Taken Seriously

[Scowler]

As if there is any difference whatsoever between '@yahoo.com' vs '@gmail.com'. Anyone who claims such is too superficial to take seriously.

Eating dog food

[Livius]

I question whether any pet food manufacturers actually follow that philosophy.

Yahoo going downhill

[PoiBoy]

I had been a faithful Yahoo up until about six months ago. MyYahoo was great, and I liked the classic version of Yahoo Mail. Then Marissa Mayer came along and wrecked everything, adding bling and fancy colors while stripping away everything I liked about Yahoo, including the fact that I had it set up to look the same for about the past 10 years. I guess some people think it was time to spruce up the place. Not me. It's Mayer's Mayhem now.

well...that certainly will follow...

[schlachter]

what's the best way to motivate the yahoo mail team to improve their product? get a whole company of your peers to be irritated with the quality of your work and to offer constructive feedback.

I know why

[nitehawk214]

Its because they are paid as well as Wallmart employees and can't afford real food, right?

They borked yahoo mail this past update

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

I liked the old version where I could see every reply I got in its own thread. This new version forces all replies into a single thread, so if you get more than one reply, you might not see the new ones. I'm a fan of yahoo mail. I liked the last version best. Too bad you can't go back to it. Yahoo has been doing a lot of pointless upgrades on things that already work and don't need new functionality. They pissed off their fantasy sports people that way too. I think corporations know they can upgrade and regress software at the same time so they can get you to pay more for something you already had. I'm not saying yahoo is guilty of this. Otherwise it wouldn't be a forced upgrade, and you'd have your choice of mail clients.

Wrong metric

[justthinkit]

The new Yahoo email is now able to serve ads to me, despite my 733KB hosts file, that change whenever I navigate anywhere in the interface. "Mission accomplished, ship it!"

Re:Wrong metric

[TheSeatOfMyPants]

Not seeing any ads with AdBlock Plus with the EasyList + EasyPrivacy filter sets even if I clicked to different messages or mailboxes -- and EasyPrivacy was busy blocking a new script every other second or so even several minutes after I opened the page. (Neither interferes with the site functionality AFAICT.)

If your browser might support it, you might want to consider supplementing that hosts file, if only for the privacy filtering.

Re:Wrong metric

[edibobb]

Why do those lists have so many ad companies white listed?

Re:Wrong metric

[noh8rz10]

did you try HOSTS FILE?

Re:Wrong metric

[justthinkit]

Thanks for the suggestions. When I looked at the links of the ads being served to me, they were to sites already blocked in my hosts file (i.e. if I had ever tried to click on them). The ads are text ads and the text is getting through perhaps because of javascript being on?

To Yahoo employees:

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a longtime Yahoo email user (10+ yrs). The most recent changes suck. I am migrating to GMail. Enjoy your dogfood.

Re:no ulterior motives?

[Ksevio]

They already use the corporate email server for corporate emails. They're just trying push them from using the Outlook client to the webmail client. I doubt "HR" has access to webmail, but not the email server.

Obviously:

[Hartree]

The take away message is that Yahoo itself admits that at least 25% of their employees eat dog food.

I can't believe that's by choice. Even the most of the furries I know don't do that just for fun. (Well, maybe the occasional Milkbone with Gnutella)

Is their pay really that poor?

Re:Wagging the HOTMAILdog.

[deviated_prevert]

Actually, usually. Most dogs hate their own dog poo.

But they do love cat poo. Which in fact is probably a more apt analogy, anyway, because the new Yahoo Mail interface looks like they ate HotMail, had horrible indigestion, and then crapped out something vaguely resembling it.

There fixed that for you.

Webmail is a goddamn disaster.

[Entropius]

You don't always have internet access. Wifi doesn't work, people's authentication systems don't work. Sometimes you want to draft replies to people's letters on an airplane and send them when you land. In short, there are lots of reasons why you can't get to The Cloud to see your mail.

Mail is lightweight. Why *shouldn't* I store my mail locally, so I can get at it no matter what? What benefit do I get from using a webmail interface over an IMAP client?

Yes, I know that things like gmail offer imap access, and that's what I use. I completely understand why companies like Google are pushing "everything is inside the browser" -- it locks people in. But what I don't understand is why people are willing to go along with it.

Re:Webmail is a goddamn disaster.

[Geeky]

Unless you want to run your own server, internet available, it's a way to have access from wherever you happen to be. Web interface, phone... whatever, wherever.

I use gmail, download all of it to my PC inside Thunderbird for archiving, and get the best of both worlds. Permanent local copy, plus ready access to incoming mail on my phone when I'm out.

Re:Webmail is a goddamn disaster.

[Tarlus]

Same here. I very much prefer using a standalone mail client for a number of reasons. But at the same time, I really appreciate having webmail as a backup. Both have their niches and I would not be comfortable relying exclusively on just one.

Food?

[agapeton]

That's the wrong four letter word.

Re:Wagging the dog. (Yahoo - please read)

[Ralph Spoilsport]

I completely agree. I got my yahoo account (IIRC) back around 1997. It was fine then - always a bit clunky, but it always worked. Now, it just sucks. The colours are garish, and they've shifted to this idiotic "Tabbed" system which was innovative in 1999. And the tabbing is stupendously stupid. Example: If you route email to certain folders, it gets dumb. I route Facebook notices to a Facebook folder. I click the Facebook folder and the Inbox tab becomes the FAcebook tab. Which is stupid. Then I click on one of the notification emails from FB, and read it. It's not that important so I click the BACK button. What happens? I'm back in Inbox, yet my FB email is still in its tab. Rather than go back to the list of FB email, I got dumped back in Inbox. Grrrrr.

So I open up a bunch of FB notifications and they all appear in tabs. Once the horizontal of the tabs is filled, an arrow down tab appears, letting you access extra tabs, right? Wrong. It lists ALL the tabs, nd you have to scroll down to the end to find the most recent ones...

Now, over the years my eyes are not as good as they were, so I have to CTRL-+ a few times to be able to read stuff easily. So, the entire interface scales up and the stupid tabs and wasted space crowd out the text, leaving me with one or two lines of text to type into. Heck - I have the same mag here in slashdot, and I can see most of my post so far.

And then some times when I open Yahoo it barks at me that my screen res is too low (which is bullshit - it's 1920 x 1280 as usual).

And while I detest Google's threaded system, at least when you start typing someone's name in the search bar, it automagically finds the person you're looking for.

Yahoo would be better stripping down the UI - reduce the glitz and colours, ditch the tabbed UI, and just make something that WORKS.

Re:Wagging the HOTMAILdog.

[Dahamma]

I was actually thinking of saying "Hotmail" in my post, but I decided Gmail was in fact more accurate. It's so obvious from the design that Marissa Meyer basically said (like she probably does for all Yahoo decisions) "well, at *Google* we did THIS..." Unfortunately, the leftovers at Yahoo aren't even competent enough to properly copy Gmail...

Lulz...

[xpax666]

“Windows 95 called and they want their mail app back.” Hilarious. 1995 called, they want their search engine back! Where's Jerry when you need him?

No kidding.

[man_ls]

Yahoo's webmail is so bad, I finally got so frustrated with it I quit entirely.

And mind you: I've never used Yahoo webmail to actually receive e-mail. It was entirely unsuitable as nothing but a dummy e-mail account to receive automated task notifications at while testing software. I hate to think how it is if someone tries to use it for their actual e-mail.

Outlook, on the other hand, isn't actually that bad in my opinion. I (gasp) own a legitimate copy of it which I use with a my small business accounts.

internet portals

[Arker]

Actually there are quite a few of them left, AOL and practically every remaining ISP runs one.

Usually only the less technically literate ever see them, of course. But they exist, and make a profit by selling ads and putting as little as possible into maintaining them.

I'm A Loser, Baby

[Ukab the Great]

"NT Server terrorized the data center landscape with the confidence of a T-Rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents who fully bought into the illusion of their son's utter uniqueness because the big-mouthed, tiny-armed monster infant could mimic the gestures of The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl"

If I was a Yahoo employee and read this memo, I would assume it would mean the company was desperate enough to hire Beck as HR director.

Re:It's Email, why does it matter.. get over it

[enrgeeman]

I know you're Anonymous, but please tell me you wrote White Shits on purpose.

Re:Wagging the dog. (Yahoo - please read)

[bickerdyke]

And while I detest Google's threaded system,

You know that you can turn of the threading in your GMail settings?

That's what I said to staff in Y! London 2007

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a short spell working at Y! in late 2007 and in front of a packed staff audience in a Leicester Square cinema in London (the only place big enough to contain everyone working there) I managed to make a point about this after the new head of the office in London was appointed. I said something along the lines of "I recently joined and noticed there's a large number of staff using Outlook Email and Calendar at work. In Microsoft they say 'we eat our own dogfood' because they use their own software. If we can't be bothered enough to trust in our own software, how can we expect our customers to?" to which I received a standing ovation from the crowd. Sad to see that 6 years later it appears that little has changed.

Yahoo Groupware.

[Zombie Ryushu]

Exchange and Outlook is not E-mail, it's Groupware. For Yahoo to compete in this space, they would have to implement GroupDav (CardDav, CalDav WebDav etc.) for all E-mail accounts, and give instructions on how to use ThunderBird for all Yahoo clients.

Will Yahoo look beyond email or go bankrupt?

[deviated_prevert]

Yahoo is positioned to do something radical. INDIVIDUALIZED services. Boutique interfaces for individuals and groups to use instead of generalist EMAIL clients. For instance a forum like interface for Classical Musicians, teachers and composers that has a web based music notation service that can spit back pdf at the clients.

There are many other fields that could use webspace mail, chat and customized content creation interfaces. THE PROBLEM is how do you pay the piper. WHEN MICROSHAFT, APPLE AND SONY are trying with the "ROCKSTAR" troll consortium to exercise a ridiculous patent on targeted advertising!

The future of the web is social space services through interfaces, this much is obvious the problem is corporations like SONY, APPLE AND MICROSOFT know this and are trying desperately to all gang up and murder the baby in the bathwater! Unfortunately for the web Yahoo cannot see the forest for the trees and by hooking itself up with BING has made a pact with the devil. NOW IF THIS POST GETS REMOVED SLASHDOT WILL LOOSE FACE IMO

Re:Wagging the dog. (Yahoo - please read)

[G-forze]

The "Previous message" arrow also sucks. If we disregard the fact that the previous-next-order is backwards IMO, it still simply does not work when newer messages have arrived since opening the latest one. If I open the lastly arrived message in the inbox, and another one arrives while I am reading it, the inbox link displays a new message, but clicking the "Previous" arrow displays the message "You have reached the first message in Inbox.", and I have to go back to Inbox and click the new message from there. What a piece of shit. Same thing with the threaded conversations, btw.

Just Want to Say

[carrier lost]

The Yahoo weather app for tablets/phones is aesthetically gorgeous and efficiently laid out.

Ditto for the Flickr app and the Flickr makeover.

Not a fan-boy, but definitely want to give props to a few things I have been enjoying using lately.

Re:no ulterior motives?

[unixisc]

How about 'use your work e-mail for work purposes only and personal e-mail for personal'? With all the free webmail services out there, it's a piece of cake setting up the latter.

Dear Marissa,

[freeze128]

If your employees are using email programs that you don't want them to be using, then you're doing *IT* wrong.

Wipe all their desktop PCs. Reinstall OS. DO NOT GIVE THE USERS ADMIN RIGHTS!

No admin rights, they cannot install outlook. Problem solved.

Why do they even have a choice?

mine lacks his but bless him he tries

[themushroom]

Cats do lick their harblz if they still have them intact. ;-)

Re:Wagging the dog. (Yahoo - please read)

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Oh, I have, I have. That it is SOP on gmail is what grinds me (and several other details that piss me off about Google in general). I have a HUGE sunk cost in yahoo - years and years of email. Jumping over to gmail isn't an optimal option, although it is getting more attractive by the day...

Re:Wagging the dog. (Yahoo - please read)

[bickerdyke]

Well, that's what I have to say kudos to Google for: dataliberation.org

They have a team dedicated to avoid vendor lock in.

when i worked at yahoo

[Some_Llama]

this was the case with all of yahoo's "products", in my group we used what worked for us in the ways we needed them to work.. much to the chagrin of those who cheer-lead the hardest, this was nowhere better felt than their internal push to get all employees to use yahoo search instead of google.

eating one's own dog food is one thing, but to limit employee productivity when those employees have no direct influence in making the food better? all it did was waste cycles and goodwill by trying to force people who didnt want to use yahoo services to use them anyway, which wasn't (imho) so much about improving them as driving up the stats of per clicks for marketing and ad revenue (more than once i overheard talk along the lines of "if everyone at this location used yahoo search instead it would bump us up by 10k users daily!!!).

-former yahoo IT dood

HTML 5 application cache and IndexedDB

[tepples]

Also, please tell me how I [as a webmail user] peruse my old e-mail when my internet connection goes down

By choosing a webmail provider that offers an offline mode that uses HTML 5 application cache and IndexedDB.

Yahoo, the play is called "fold" and you missed it

[AbominousSalad]

"...anachronism of the now defunct 90s PC era, a pre-web program written at a time when NT Server terrorized the data center landscape with the confidence of a T-Rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents who fully bought into the illusion of their son's utter uniqueness because the big-mouthed, tiny-armed monster infant could mimic the gestures of The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl."

Behold, the rantings of a crazy person.

Also, lol, someone at Yahoo thinks they're relevant. It's not cute anymore.

"anachronism of the now defunct 90s PC era" should be Yahoo's new slogan. Projecting much?