Yahoo Attempts to Face Competition by Revamping Mail Service

For a while Yahoo Inc. has been having trouble keeping its head over water as users switch to services from rivals such as Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. As well, users have been using social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter instead of Yahoo Mail.

In order to help stem this user decline, Yahoo is redesigning its email system. Yahoo is working towards making Yahoo Mail simpler to use, and will be adding functions to make it more social.

The planned changes to Yahoo Mail are part of a project code-named "Minty," they are also partly aimed at increasing the speed of the service in overseas markets where Internet connections are usually much slower than in countries such as the United States.

Yahoo will be changing the look of the service to resemble the simpler design of the email app that is downloaded on mobile devices such as Apple's iPad or Google's Android phones. These changes to the email service are expected to start rolling out this fall.

Yahoo Mail is the number 1 Web-based email service in the U.S. with over 97 million unique visitors in August. That's more than Google's Gmail and Microsoft's Hotmail combined, according to comScore Inc. However, that figure is down from 107 million visitors from August of last year. Those missing visitors are using other services such as Google's Gmail.

Gmail has begun growing very fast, especially since the release of Google Voice which allows users to make voice and video calls through the web-based service, providing their computer has a webcam and microphone. Almost every new laptop computer ships with these accessories, so that's no big worry. Gmail has been becoming very popular, and at the rate that it's going it might soon surpass Yahoo Mail.

Yahoo faces a tough battle with Microsoft and Google, and unless their changes are very big they are going to have a hard time retaining their popularity.

Since most smart phones that ship with Google's Android operating system come preloaded with Gmail, Yahoo has been threatened. However, now Yahoo has made a deal with Nokia, the makers of Symbian - one of the most popular mobile operating systems - to pre-install Yahoo Mail and chat applications on some of its phones.

This could bring Yahoo Mail the exposure it needs.