Yahoo! Mail Turns 10!!
October 10th, 2007
(11 votes, average: 4.55 out of 5)
Loading ...A while back we posted about introducing unlimited storage to everyone. We also mentioned that we were fast approaching our 10 year anniversary. That day has come! On October 8, 2007, Yahoo! Mail officially turned 10. The VP of mail, John Kremer, published the message below on the corporate blog. It definitely makes for some good reading and a bit of nostalgia.
Happy emailing!
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team
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Happy 10th Birthday, Yahoo! Mail
Today marks a special milestone for Yahoo!. Ten years ago today, Yahoo! Mail was born. It’s hard to imagine that just a decade ago, the idea of free email accessible from anywhere was a novelty.
Think of how far we’ve come since then. Web mail now is one of the most popular ways to stay in touch. It’s brought families closer together, let travelers send regards from the road, and made the concept of change-of-address notices virtually obsolete.
Ten years ago, Yahoo! Mail launched with just 3 megabytes of storage and the only images you were likely to receive were ASCII Art. Today, JPEGs are by far the most popular attachment type in Yahoo! Mail. Ten years ago mobile phones were bulky, expensive luxuries that were basically used for one thing: to make important phone calls. These days, everyone from students to busy parents and grandparents use their cell phones to check email on the go. And ten years ago, many people didn’t “get” Web mail or why they would need an address that wasn’t tethered to their ISP. Now many use it as their primary personal mail address.
Since we’re feeling nostalgic, we’ve put together some email milestones from the last decade:
- October 1997: Yahoo! Mail launches following our acquisition of Four 11, creators of RocketMail.
- December 1998: The movie You’ve Got Mail debuts.
- March 1999: CNN’s Ten Commandments of Email cites that Americans sent 2.1 billion emails daily (vs. 196 billion per day this year).
- December 1999: Yahoo! Mail launches Spamguard to detect spam and banish it to a separate folder.
- January 2000: Web mail survives Y2K.
- November 2001: Pope John Paul II is the first pontiff to send an email apology.
- March 2002: It’s reported internationally that email outpaces snail mail as the preferred method for residential communication.
- December 2003: Congress passes the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 to regulate the sending of commercial email.
- July 2004: Yahoo! acquires Oddpost, bringing AJAX to Yahoo! and inspiring Yahoo! Mail’s most significant upgrade ever.
- June 2005: Broadway’s “Spamalot” wins Tony Award for Best Musical.
- March 2006: IDG study shows that Americans sent 11.8 billion photos via email in 2005, compared with 2.6 billion in 2000. By 2009, this number is projected to 25.7 billion images.
- March 2007: Yahoo! Mail announces free, unlimited e-mail storage for all users.
- August 2007: According to Comscore , the worldwide Web mail market counts approximately 543 million people, with Yahoo! Mail alone representing 255 million.
It’s funny to reflect that when Rocketmail first started, many users chose to list their email addresses in a public directory because they wanted everyone to know how to contact them. Fast-forward to a world where we invest a huge amount of time and diligence protecting our users from spam (now estimated to represent more than 70% of all email) and phishing attacks.
So what about you? We put together a brief survey to find out how your email habits have evolved over the past 10 years. Please share your thoughts with us (or leave them as comments), and we’ll be sure to report back on our findings later this month.
Until then, happy emailing!
John Kremer
Vice President, Yahoo! Mail
13 Comments Add your own
1. Andrew Wilson | October 11th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
its sad that after 10 years you now send span adverts along with e-mail, whoever is in charge should hang their head in shame. BT Yahoo has now joined the spammers and has become part of the problem
2. amanda buah | October 12th, 2007 at 9:34 am
i j-u-s-t love yahoo! Have a y*a*h*o*o celebration!!!
3. Alan Marron | October 12th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
What’s gone wrong? I love the new look, but it’s so bug-ridden that it’s just not usable. I have a second address through Yahoo Small Business Mail, and it’s my main account. Suddenly the new ‘improved’ Yahoo Mail doesn’t show it, yet until today it used to.
I need a relaible e-mail service, and this is nothing of the kind!
Apart from the regular crashes, it’s just not stable enough.
More work should have been done on getting it right before it was offered to users.
It should now be withdrawn until the major issues have been sorted out!
4. Titilola | October 13th, 2007 at 6:43 am
HAPPY 10TH BIRTHDAY YAHOO MAIL. many happy returns, long life and more prosperous things. you are on top. the sky is your limit move on
5. Elaine Woodford | October 14th, 2007 at 10:48 am
Is there any way I can use smilies with the Ya Hoo emails?.
6. Ken Stewart | October 15th, 2007 at 10:27 am
It is a pity you are unable to stop the many rubbish and “suggestive ” emails which I am sent. I know they go straight to ny “Bulk Box”, but i would rather not be pestered by them.
7. christabel | October 25th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
HAPPY 10TH BIRTHDAY YAHOO MAIL. many happy returns, long life and more prosperous things. you are on top. the sky is your limit move on
8. Patience Akhimien | November 2nd, 2007 at 6:14 am
Good luck Yahoo, please block junk mails from entry my inbox. I think Yahoo will do better if only they can recongnise and stop fraudulent e-mails especially those ones asking for identification to claim an unusual amount of money and business transactions.
9. Gilbert Bruce | January 12th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Very many happy returns. Your progress is almost beyond belief. Only a seer could have imagined all this ten years ago
10. Keith Capon | January 25th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Still have trouble with bookmarks especially on the main account - ‘Failed to add bookmark’ comes up every time here on the ‘Add New Folder’ setting although on the ‘Read Later’ setting it usually saves. On the latter (’Read Later’)once used to recall a file it must be saved again which it is probably meant to I presume. I am satisfied otherwise and would not change anything else.
KC
11. Catherine Inglesby | June 1st, 2008 at 7:36 pm
My Yahoo classic mail has always worked, I have often switched to the new Yahoo mail, but now, for some reason, if I try to switch to the all new Yahoo mail, I get logged out, it tells me that the java files cant be found. However, I created a new Yahoo mail address and this works fine, why would I have that message for one mail address, but not for the other?
Catherine
12. Alice Kiingi | June 6th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Congs and happy returns Y…a…h…o…………..o
But hey you gotta work alot on the crap junk email although it comes in as bulk some body their do something or bury your head in a heap of garbage. I
13. thomas | June 11th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
not to bad but better than before it takes a bit of getting use to
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