“We have always been focused on making it easy for people to connect to those who matter most to them, and during the beta testing period of the new Yahoo Mail, we were able to incorporate a number of enhancements based on valuable feedback from our users,” Yahoo Vice President John Kremer said.
The new upgrades to the Yahoo system will permit users to send free text messages from Yahoo Mail to mobile phone numbers within the U.S., Canada, the Philippines and India, as well as the ability to send instant messages from Yahoo Mail to users of Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger2.
The upgraded Yahoo Mail gives users the ability to click on a contact name and select whether to send the person an email, instant message or text message, and adjust according to how the user will be receiving the message.
According to Yahoo, the new version of Yahoo Mail that begins its rollout today will take approximately six weeks to become available to all 254 million Yahoo Mail subscribers worldwide.
As Yahoo rolls out its upgraded service, it will continue to offer what it now refers to as “Yahoo Mail Classic,” the company stated in a press release.
“With the all-new Yahoo Mail, we’re creating a more social email experience,” Kremer said. “In addition, we wanted to make sure that people have the best possible web mail experience regardless of their geographic location, preferences or system, so we’re continuing to offer our trusted Yahoo Mail Classic interface.”
The newly added features come at a time when competition between the various providers of free web-based email services is heating up significantly. Yahoo and Hotmail, Microsoft’s free email service, have been the clear leaders in the space for years, but Google’s Gmail service introduced a potent new challenge when it was launched a little more than three years ago.
In other moves made by the major free email providers this year, Hotmail previously announced that it was increasing its available free storage space from 2 to 5 gigabytes, while Yahoo began offering unlimited storage space in February.