Yahoo Mail Chases Gmail with IM and SMS Features

Yahoo Mail has rolled out SMS and IM options, allowing users to send messages to their friends’ phones or instant messaging accounts from within the Yahoo Mail interface. The features were already available in the new version of Yahoo Mail, but with millions of users still on the “Classic” version, today’s rollout brings them to a whole new audience.

And the features are good – sending an SMS to friends is quick and easy, functioning like a typical IM chat. And the built-in messaging is nice – if you use Yahoo Messenger or Windows Live Messenger. But unlike Gmail, the most popular IM platform – AIM – isn’t built-in to the chat, shutting off access to the bulk of my IM contacts. This, along with other issues like weaker spam filtering and an interface rife with graphical ads, leave me with absolutely no reason to switch to Yahoo Mail. It’s not just a Yahoo thing either. When I revisited AOL Mail last week after a few years of absence to check out their new app platform, the results were much the same. The bottom line is that while these services continue to add nice new features, the core product, email, is just not very good.

Nonetheless, I can understand why these services still have tens of millions of users – AOL, Yahoo, and Hotmail landed on Plymouth Rock before Google did, there is a huge amount of lock-in with email, and switching addresses is not a viable option for lots of people. But the Gmail team simply gets user experience in a way that its competitors do not. For example, just yesterday, Gmail launched offline support, making it further on-par with the desktop mail clients that many corporate users still rely on.

While Gmail’s marketshare might still be small relative to its competitors, it’s only because those companies had a big head start. If you’re new to the Web (which, let’s not forget millions still are every year) or finally making the switch from desktop to webmail, Gmail should be your email provider, hands-down.