Yahoo Email in 2023!

Yahoo email. Once a popular option for free email, it has gone to the technology graveyard with Myspace and Google Hangouts... or has it?

A little history

Yahoo Mail started in 1997 when Yahoo acquired RocketMail. Instead of building their own email service, they decided to acquire another service to keep up with the quickly growing Hotmail.

As the service grew, it hovered between the most popular and the second most popular email service on the internet. But, when Gmail was announced Yahoo lost a lot of market share.

As time has gone on, Yahoo email accounts have become fewer and far between. It seems that everyone and their dog have a Gmail address. In my experience, Outlook.com or Hotmail.com addresses are at least a little more common than Yahoo, although Gmail is by far the most popular... for good reason.

In 2017, Yahoo was in bad shape. The company was acquired by Verizon. Two years earlier, Verizon had acquired AOL (another internet veteran brand). Before the Yahoo deal closed, Verizon announced that they would combine the former Yahoo and AOL into Oath Holdings.

The former Yahoo experience was carved up and sold to other companies. Tumblr was sold to Automattic and Flickr was sold to SmugMug. Yahoo was but a shell of its former self... but Verizon was not finished with Yahoo.

In 2021, Verizon announced that Oath would be acquired by Apollo Global Management. Apollo renamed Oath to Yahoo Inc. (how confusing)

Turns out... Yahoo Mail is alive and well!

As far as I can tell, the latest incarnation of the Yahoo Mail service came in 2017 after the Verizon acquisition. I am not sure of this fact however, and results online are fuzzy.

However, you can still sign up for and use a @yahoo.com, @myyahoo.com, or @aol.com email address. With the exception of myyahoo.com (which was added to allow for more available addresses), these are the familiar email domains we have all seen at least once.

But what if I told you... there are at least two other domains that you can use with Yahoo Mail? And what if I told you that you can use your own domain with Yahoo Mail, just like Google Workspace?

Currently... the strangest email service I've ever seen

Currently.com is a web portal and email service owned by AT&T and operated by Yahoo. Buckle in, this is possibly the strangest email service that I have ever been a part of. Anyone, regardless of whether or not they are an AT&T customer, can sign up for and use an ATT.net or Currently.com email account.

In 2008, AT&T signed a contract with Yahoo to provide the att.net portal. However, as far back as 2000, it seems that AT&T was working with Yahoo to provide internet, email, and web portal services.

In 2016, AT&T partnered with Synacor (developers of Zimbra) to provide email services. In 2019, that contract ended, and a new contract was awarded to Verizon, who had just purchased Yahoo two years earlier. It was at this time that the Currently.com email domain and brand were introduced.

This is where the story gets strange to me. AT&T hired their #1 competitor in the wireless space to provide email services to their wireline and fiber internet customers. Never before, as far as I know, has one large telecom awarded a contract to their direct competitor.

But the story gets stranger. Because I am a nerd, I did a DNS lookup on AT&T's email servers. Accounts are offered on the @att.net and @currently.com domains. However, the MX record for both points to prodigy.net.

Prodigy was an early internet provider, initially providing a proprietary portal and system, but later expanding into general internet access. At least some of these services were offered in partnership with Yahoo. Prodigy was eventually acquired by SBC Communications, which later acquired AT&T, then renamed the combined company AT&T.

If you navigate to prodigy.net, you will not see a webpage. The brand was retired years ago. But for some reason, AT&T is using prodigy.net to host their mail servers.

I think this is neat- Yahoo, AOL, Prodigy, and ATT are all internet veterans. These are all connected through the common strand of Yahoo Mail, all 30 year old brands.

The Common Thread: Yahoo Mail

Back to the main story.

Yahoo Mail, AOL, and Currently.com email all use the same interface and backend for email. This means that if you like one of those domains over another, you can just sign up with that domain and use the service as if you are using Yahoo Mail. This also means that if you are holding on to an old account from any of these providers, it will still work with Yahoo Mail.

I must admit, Yahoo Mail's interface and apps are well-designed and full featured. Each account allows you to store up to 1 TB of emails. (that's a lot of emails...)

As you can see, these three interfaces are almost exactly the same. There are a few differences between the three interfaces that are consistent with the brand. For example, AOL Mail allows you to have the classic "You've got mail" sound play when you open your inbox. Barring this, it is the same interface and backend powering all three.

But now, as I promised... you can use Yahoo Mail with a custom domain.

Just like Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 email, Yahoo offers small business branded email through the Turbify brand. This is a rebranding of their previous Yahoo Small Business brand that provides website hosting and email services.

To test this out, I signed up for email hosting with Turbify. As expected, it opened the familiar Yahoo Mail interface, but this time the address was on a domain that I got for free with my 1-month subscription to Turbify Email.

The real question...

Okay Matt, this is all fine and dandy. But does anyone actually want to use Yahoo based email in 2023 when Gmail exists?

Well, I think so.

Recently, I decided to create a new Gmail address that I gave to people. This address is only given to people, never services. This account's sole purpose is for communications with other humans, not online services.

This has been such a productivity hack for me. I get a couple hundred emails a day. I use Fastmail and SaneBox to try to get some sanity in my email box, but I still find it pretty hard to triage my emails.

Once I started giving out this new Gmail address, I found myself able to separate the necessary, need to deal with messages from the unnecessary but not spam messages. This has relieved most of my email anxiety.

What I am trying to say is this: If you have an overwhelming number of emails coming in every day, it might be time for a new inbox. With 1 TB of email storage, a Yahoo based email account might be just the account that you can use as your human inbox. While a @yahoo.com, @myyahoo.com, @aol.com, @currently.com, or @att.net address might not be glamorous, there are ways around it. Services such as ImprovMX and SimpleLogin are easy (and free/cheap) ways to convert that Yahoo address to a custom domain. Maybe I'll do a guide on that some time.

In Conclusion

To try to sum all of this up, Yahoo Mail still exists. While it is not the most popular email provider, it can be miles better than other services. (I'm looking at you, Windstream...)

That is, if you can stand the ads. In my mind, this is not a valid criticism. Gmail also has ads. Yahoo Mail’s ads can be a little more intrusive and annoying than Gmail ads, but they are still easy to ignore. If you’ve tolerated Gmail ads, you can tolerate Yahoo Mail ads.

If you are looking for a new email account or something to play with on a rainy afternoon, Yahoo Mail is worth a look. Will it still be around in 4 or 5 years? Who knows, but it has lasted this long, which is a good sign.

Let me know in the comments below- what email service do you use? Have you ever used Yahoo Mail, or a service that uses Y! Mail in the backend? How do you manage your inbox?

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