Single Ajax Interface For Yahoo Mail & IM Coming
Nov 10th, 2006 by Milan Dinić
This morning Yahoo will announce that they will integrate an Ajax version of Yahoo Instant Messaging directly into the new Yahoo Mail beta. Unlike Google’s integration of Google Talk with Gmail earlier this year, Yahoo is combining the products into a single interface. Yahoo says the new features will launch in the next two months.
Yahoo Mail continues to surge in worldwide and U.S. usage v. Gmail - Yahoo claims that Yahoo Mail gained more new U.S. users that in the first nine months of 2006 than total U.S. Gmail users to date. Comscore backs this claim up, reporting 250 million worldwise users of Yahoo Mail to Google’s 51 million (September 2006) (see chart to left).
The number of IM users worldwide is still very small compared to web-based email users - 80 million IM users v. nearly 500 million web mail users. Yahoo hopes to introduce IM to the large percentage of Yahoo webmail users who’ve never tried IM.