Sunday, August 26, 2007

Great, Yahoo, but You're Missing the Key

Yahoo has announced some cool new features for Yahoo.com email users. Among them is the ability to type text messages on a computer and send them directly to a user's cell phone.

I always applaud innovation, but one of the key critiques I have heard about Yahoo email (and experienced myself) is their overzealous server side spam filters. In the e-commerce world, a larger percentage of customers with Yahoo accounts are left out of the loop on the status of their order compared to users of other email services (with the exception of Hotmail) because often times emails sent from retailers about their purchases get incorrectly filtered out as spam before the customers have a chance to see them.

When people tell me which free email service is the best, I always tell them Gmail, simply because their messages will get to them. Yahoo may be forging ahead with new technology, but until they come up with a better way to make sure their users get the emails they need, I will continue to suggest Google's Gmail service when asked.

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