Yahoo! Mail is a Web-based email (webmail) service from Yahoo!. Inaugurated in 1997, Yahoo! Mail serves over 260 million users. Currently, Yahoo! offers two versions of Yahoo! Mail: an Outlook-like Ajax interface powered by Yahoo!'s Zimbra introduced in 2007, as well as the traditional static-web-page "Yahoo! Mail Classic," which continues the availability of the simpler 1997-2006 interface for the brand's considerable installed base of users. In early 2008, Yahoo! started offering unlimited mail storage even to its non-paying users, in response to heated competition in the free-webmail market segment.

History

The history of Yahoo! Mail began with JoJo Healy, Yahoo!'s resident investment banker since November 1996, who has dealt with every Yahoo! acquisition since it was created. "No one knows your business like your employees," he said. According to him, the main question was always to consider whether to "build, buy or rent." The answer really depended on the growth of competitors and the current position of the company. The main reason to buy things was to gain speed to market.

The growth in the number of Internet users eventually boosted the e-mail technology, but also created a very competitive environment where the winner was the first company to launch a successful e-mail service and attract potential users. E-mail became one of the most important features of a Web company as it would mean regular visits from e-mail users to the website.

When Hotmail and Mirabilis (the creator of the instant messenger ICQ) were looking to be bought, Yahoo! was the first company to which both made offers. Yahoo!, however, passed on both companies as they were too expensive for Yahoo! at that time. In the end, Microsoft ended up buying Hotmail for $400 million and AOL bought Mirabilis for $288 million.

Later there was also to be another battle to acquire the online communications company Four11. Yahoo! made a deal with the company for co-branded white pages. Marvin Gavin, who worked at Four11 as director of international business development said, "We always had a bias about being acquired by Yahoo! They were more entrepreneurial than Microsoft. We had a great cultural fit – it made a lot of sense." The real point in acquiring Four11 was that in March 1997, the company had launched Rocketmail, a webmail system that could be offered to users. In the end, Yahoo! concluded a deal with Four11 for $96 million. Yahoo! announced the acquisition on October 8, 1997, very close to the time that Yahoo! Mail was launched. Yahoo! Mail resulted from an acquisition rather than internal platform development because, as Healy said, "Hotmail was growing at thousands and thousands users per week. We did an analysis. For us to build, it would have taken four to six months, and by then, so many users would have taken an e-mail account. The speed of the market was critical."