yahoo mail

							Yahoo! Mail is a free e-mail service offered by the American search engine company Yahoo!. It
was inaugurated in 1997, and, according to comScore, Yahoo! Mail was the second largest web-
based email service with 310 million users as of October 2011, and the most popular webmail
service in the United States.[1]

Currently, Yahoo! offers three versions of Yahoo! Mail. The traditional "Yahoo! Mail Classic"
continues the availability of the original interface introduced in 1997. A new version introduced
in 2005 included a new Ajax interface, drag-and-drop, improved search functionality, keyboard
shortcuts, address auto-complete, tabs, and more. In October 2010, Yahoo! released a new beta
version of Yahoo! Mail,[2] which included a new design, improved performance, improved
search functionality, and improved Facebook integration.[3] In May 2011, beta testing for the new
version stopped, and it became the default interface for Yahoo! Mail.[4]

In early 2008, Yahoo! started offering unlimited mail storage to its users, in response to heated
competition in the free-web mail market segment.[5]

On June 27, 2009, Yahoo! Messenger was integrated with Yahoo! Mail.[6]

Contents
      1 History
      2 Yahoo! Mail Classic
      3 Yahoo! Mail (2007 release)
          o 3.1 Underlying technologies
          o 3.2 Introduction
          o 3.3 Features
      4 Yahoo! Mail (2011 release)
      5 Features
          o 5.1 Free version
                   5.1.1 Free IMAP and SMTPs access
          o 5.2 Business
      6 Ymail and Rocketmail
      7 Spam policy
          o 7.1 Filters
          o 7.2 Greylisting
      8 Controversy
          o 8.1 Shi Tao arrest
          o 8.2 Username bans
          o 8.3 Search function failure
      9 NNFMP
      10 Email domains
      11 See also
      12 References
      13 External links
History
The growth in the number of Internet users eventually boosted the email technology, but also
created a very competitive environment where the winner was the first company to launch a
successful email service and attract potential users. Email became one of the most important
features of a Web company as it would mean regular visits from email 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 US$400 million and AOL bought Mirabilis for $288 million.

Yahoo! made a deal with the online communications company Four11 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[7] on October 8, 1997, very close to the time that Yahoo! Mail
was launched.[8] 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 email account. The speed of the market was critical."

The transition to Yahoo! Mail was not easy for many Rocketmail users at first. Yahoo! released
various help pages to try to help these users.[9] Soon after, on March 21, 2002, Yahoo! cut free
software client access and introduced the $29.99 per year Mail Forwarding Service.[10] Mary
Osako, a Yahoo! Spokeswoman, told CNET, "For-pay services on Yahoo!, originally launched
in February 1999, have experienced great acceptance from our base of active registered users,
and we expect this adoption to continue to grow."

During the summer of 2002, the Yahoo! network was gradually redesigned. On July 2,
Yahoo.com was redesigned and it was announced that other services like Yahoo! Mail would
enter the same process.[11] Along with this new design, new features were to be implemented,
including new navigation tools, such as drop-down menus in DHTML and different category
tabs, and a new user-customizable color scheme.

In November of the same year, Yahoo! launched another paid service: Yahoo! Mail Plus.[12]
Yahoo!