Yahoo Mail

1997–2002

On October 8, 1997, Yahoo announced its acquisition of online communications company Four11 for $92 million in stock.[7] As part of the purchase, Yahoo received Four11's RocketMail webmail service. Yahoo Mail, based on the RocketMail technology,[8] launched at the same time.[9] Yahoo! chose 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."[10]

On March 21, 2002, Yahoo! eliminated free software client access and introduced the $29.99 per year Mail Forwarding Service.[11] 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."[11]

2002–2010

During 2002, the Yahoo network was gradually redesigned, including the company website, Yahoo Mail and other services.[12] Along with the new design, new features were implemented, including drop-down menus in DHTML and keyboard shortcuts.[13]

On July 9, 2004, Yahoo! acquired Oddpost, a webmail service which simulated a desktop email client. Oddpost had features such as drag-and-drop support, right-click menus, RSS feeds, a preview pane, and increased speed using email caching to shorten response time. Many of the features were incorporated into an updated Yahoo! Mail service.[14]

Competition

On April 1, 2004, Google announced its Gmail service with 1 GB of storage, although Gmail's invitation-only accounts kept the other webmail services at the forefront. Most major webmail providers, including Yahoo! Mail, increased their mailbox storage in response. Yahoo! first announced 100 MB of storage for basic accounts and 2 GB of storage for premium users.[15] However, soon Yahoo Mail increased its free storage quota to 1 GB, before eventually allowing unlimited storage from March 27, 2007,[16] until October 8, 2013.[17]

2011–2021

In May 2011, Yahoo Mail rolled out a new interface. It included updated design, enhanced performance, and improved Facebook integration.[18]

In 2013, Yahoo! redesigned the site and removed several features, such as simultaneously opening multiple emails in tabs, sorting by sender name, and dragging mails to folders.[19][20] The new email interface was geared to give an improved user-experience for mobile devices, but was criticized for having an inferior desktop interface. Many users objected to the unannounced nature of the changes through an online post asking Yahoo! to bring back mail tabs with one hundred thousand voting and nearly ten thousand commenting.[21] The redesign produced a problem that caused an unknown number of users to lose access to their accounts for several weeks.[22]

In December 2013, Yahoo! Mail suffered a major outage where approximately one million users, one percent of the site's total users, could not access their emails for several days. Yahoo!'s then-CEO Marissa Mayer publicly apologized to the site's users.[23][24][25][26]

China Yahoo Mail announced in April 2013 that it would shut down that August as part of Yahoo ceasing services in China since acquiring a stake in Alibaba in 2005.[27] Users with email address suffixes @yahoo.com.cn and @yahoo.cn could transfer their accounts to AliCloud to continue receiving messages through the end of 2014.[28]

In January 2014, an undisclosed number of usernames and passwords were released to hackers, following a security breach that Yahoo! believed had occurred through a third-party website. Yahoo! contacted affected users and requested that passwords be changed.[29]

In October 2015, Yahoo! updated the mail service with a "more subtle" redesign, as well as improved mobile features. The same release introduced the Yahoo! Account Key, a smartphone-based replacement for password logins.[30] The app also added support for third-party mail accounts.[31]

In 2017, Yahoo! again redesigned the web interface with a "more minimal" look, and introduced the option to customize it with different color themes and layouts.[32]

In 2019, Yahoo released a redesigned Yahoo Mail app to organize user inboxes, introducing features including a one-tap unsubscribe tool, package tracking, and travel updates.[33]

In 2020, Yahoo Mail users were able to fill Walmart shopping carts directly from their inboxes,[34] an industry first.[35] Yahoo! also added a feature to view NFL matches.[36]

2022–present

In 2022, updates to the Yahoo Mail mobile app added tools to help manage receipts, gift cards, and subscriptions.[37] AI-based additions in 2023 included a feature that automates tracking coupon codes and credits for online shopping, as well as updates to search suggestions, message summaries and AI writing assistance.[38] In 2024, updates to the desktop interface added more AI-based features, including a "priority inbox" tab with automatically generated summaries of important messages and automated suggestions of next actions based on message contents.[39]

In February 2025, Yahoo aired its first Super Bowl ad since 2002, in which Bill Murray invited viewers to contact him at his Yahoo Mail email address (billhimself@yahoo.com).[40] The address received nearly 150,000 emails in the first two hours after broadcast.[41] In June 2025, Yahoo Mail introduced a "Catch Up" feature that provides AI-generated summaries and email previews and prompts users to choose to delete or retain each one.[42] As part of the feature's launch, Yahoo Mail collaborated with streetwear brand Anti Social Social Club on an apparel release.[43]

Filters

In order to prevent abuse, in 2002 Yahoo! Mail activated filters which changed certain words (that could trigger unwanted JavaScript events) and word fragments into other words. "mocha" was changed to "espresso", "expression" became "statement", and "eval" (short for "evaluation") became "review". This resulted in many unintended corrections, such as "prevent" (prevalent), "revalidation" (evaluation) and "media review" (medieval).

When asked about these changes, Yahoo! explained that the changed words were common terms used in their privacy dashboard and were blacklisted to prevent hackers from sending damaging commands via the program's HTML function. Starting before February 7, 2006, Yahoo! Mail ended the practice, and began to add an underscore as a prefix to certain suspicious words and word fragments.

Greylisting

Incoming mail to Yahoo! addresses can be subjected to deferred delivery as part of Yahoo's incoming spam controls. This can delay delivery of mail sent to Yahoo! addresses without the sender or recipients being aware of it. The deferral is typically of short duration, but may extend up to several hours. Yahoo! does not specifically document this policy in detail, although some information is available.[51][52]

Shi Tao arrest

In 2004, Yahoo's Hong Kong office provided technical information to the Chinese authorities about the account of journalist Shi Tao, who was subsequently sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for "leaking state secrets".[53][54] Yahoo! was criticized by Reporters Without Borders for acting as a "police informant" to increase its profits.[55] In August 2007, the United States Congress began an investigation into Yahoo's handling of the case.[56] Yahoo! founder Jerry Yang testified before Congress.[57] On November 6, 2007, the congressional panel criticized Yahoo! for not giving full details to the House Foreign Affairs Committee the previous year, stating it had been "at best inexcusably negligent" and at worst "deceptive".[58] Representative Tom Lantos described its executives as moral "pygmies".[59] Yang stated that Yahoo! no longer controlled its Chinese operations, and was collaborating with human rights groups to formulate ethical code for technology companies.[60]

In a February 2006 hearing, Yahoo! executives swore that they had received no information about the investigation. Several months later, it was discovered that the document provided to Yahoo! China on April 22, 2004, by the Beijing State Security Bureau stated that "Your office is in possession of the following items relating to a case of suspected illegal provision of state secrets to foreign entities."[61]

On November 13, 2007, Yahoo! settled with Shi for an undisclosed sum. Shi was released from prison in September 2013.

Username bans

On February 20, 2006, it was revealed that Yahoo! Mail was banning the word "Allah" in email usernames, both separately and as part of a user name such as as suffixes.[82] Internet service providers using Yahoo! Mail offer their own suffixes for subscribers, with AT&T also offering free accounts to non-subscribers.[83]

Business email was previously available with the Yahoo! Small Business brand. It transitioned to Verizon Small Business Essentials in early 2022.