Yahoo! Mail Partners With Dropbox To Add File Attachments

http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/02/yahoos-resurging-mail-product-gets-a-boost-from-dropbox-partnership-to-make-managing-attachments-easier/

by hoov • 13 years ago

83 61 13 years ago

techcrunch.com

fatjokes• 13 years ago

Cute, but I'm still not using Yahoo! Mail for anything except spam.

lightup882• 13 years ago

Forget Yahoo for Spam. I'm pretty well sold on Mailinator for disposable email.

ibudiallo• 13 years ago

Yahoo mail is amazing, and I am referring to the classic version. It looks like they are working hard to get some attention. Now this is much better news than their latest acquisition

qued• 13 years ago

Unless I get some free DropBox space by using Yahoo, I don't care.

jwwest• 13 years ago

> Yahoo! Mail is still the #3 most used mail service in the world with Hotmail and Gmail in front of it.

I'd love to see numbers of how many people ACTIVELY use these services and not just total email addresses. Many, many people I know of use Yahoo and Hotmail for spam traps, or set an email address there up long ago and then long ago abandoned it.

Claiming "most used mail service" is either very misleading, or sloppy writing.

minimaxir• 13 years ago

I believe that both Yahoo and Hotmail are frequently used outside of the US, especially in Asia.

joshuacc• 13 years ago

While most of the people I know use gmail, Yahoo mail is a fairly close second. It tends to be among the less technically sophisticated, but they really use it.

atwebb• 13 years ago

I like how you ask for data to verify it (which is totally valid) and then make a definitive statement (or options). Yahoo could definitely be #3 in active use, just like AOL still has tons of users and XP has a large install base. I know of many small businesses that use Yahoo for stores and web hosting (though it is generally an awful experience) because they have business processes around them, and changing those processes is hard and expensive.

Ntrails• 13 years ago

Almost nothing wrong with Windows XP, which is more than can be said for the current version of Windows.

On the other hand I am not sure that Yahoo is particularly awful - I use it as a garbage account for trashy site registering, and my father uses it for his main email for which it works perfectly well.

Better than this hideous new interface hotmail has foisted on me, and which is the main reason I am actually going to make the switch to Gmail.

untog2• 13 years ago

I think this is one of those tech bubble things- everyone we know uses Gmail. But outside of tech circles a great many people still use Hotmail and Yahoo mail. Like my parents.

At least they're not using AOL.

georgekv• 13 years ago

Yea, same with my in-laws & other relatives. In the regular world, Yahoo Mail works just fine for plenty of people.

shardling• 13 years ago

Yes, I know my mom and many of her friends use Yahoo. (My dad just uses the same university email he's had forever.)

I'm pretty sure she's used it since before gmail even existed. It works for her, why would she switch?

dear• 13 years ago

So true! People should stop treating their own little circle as representative of the world.

smackfu• 13 years ago

The rankings are generally based on website traffic, not email addresses.

For instance, Comscore: http://gigaom.com/2012/10/31/gmail-finally-beats-hotmail-acc...

OGinparadise• 13 years ago

I have 1 yahoo, 4-5 gmail and about the same in Outbox /Hotmail addresses.

rm999• 13 years ago

A very biased sample from my address book (which mostly contains active e-mails - I periodically clean it out of stale addresses):

* gmail: 220

* something.edu: 30

* yahoo: 14

* hotmail: 12

* aol: 0

vidarh4• 13 years ago

From UK mailing lists run off a system I manage, for us Hotmail makes up about 50%, with Gmail and Yahoo fighting for the second spot, based on a (self-selected) sample of 1.5 million+ subscribers across the lists.

And yes, these are mostly active users - we see no statistically significant difference in engagement levels between the major webmail services.

Gmail only thoroughly dominates amongst techies. Regular users largely either don't care, or very often active prefer the "Outlook style" interface of Hotmail or Yahoo.

loceng3• 13 years ago

They are playing catchup to competitors, and they are diluting their own profits / sharing them with others - which is fine, though I hope they realize this. And I hope they have a very solid agreement with Dropbox.

Google so far will still win in the overall big ecosystem. You just can't compete with the synergy and safety of one organization fully controlling / having full management capabilities over all of the pieces.

Spooky23• 13 years ago

... If they execute well.

Google is a tough company to evaluate in the long haul, because the value of some of the services Google offers to Google is difficult to assess. Plus, they make mercurial and random decisions.

mindcrime4• 13 years ago

You just can't compete with the synergy and safety of one organization fully controlling / having full management capabilities over all of the pieces.

You mean the single-point-of-failure of having all of your eggs in one basket, and one company completely in control of every piece of your life. You're right, how could anybody compete against that? :-)

psbp3• 13 years ago

You don't have to be locked into the ecosystem though. It's just more convenient to have everything in one place.

loceng3• 13 years ago

Indeed, they will have to find balance, though fluidity of services and a cheaper price - potentially even 50% of what others offer - will offset whatever other concerns you have, and Google might be able to eventually have things structured so everyone is structured, and safe.

vidarh4• 13 years ago

Diluting their profits, _how_? Yahoo's premium services for mail have been peanuts for Yahoo since before 2003. The launch of Gmail pretty much killed what was already a tiny business (I was in charge of handling payments for Y! mail and other yahoo services in Europe around the time Gmail launched; the numbers were not pretty).

On the contrary, this is a fast way for them to add more revenue from users that upgrade, to a service which has never made much money.

Yahoo! Mail has always been about getting users into the Yahoo! network rather than the direct revenue. E.g. a substantial percentage of users going to Yahoo's homepages go there to check their e-mail.

When I was there (I left early 2007, so things might have changed), Mail drove a very substantial percentage of Yahoo's pageviews, but most of the revenue from those users came when they interacted with Yahoo outside of the mail property - when they were checking their mail they'd rarely click on ads because they were busy with their e-mail. Better monetizing the Mail property while cutting storage costs would be fantastic news for Yahoo.

> You just can't compete with the synergy and safety of one organization fully controlling / having full management capabilities over all of the pieces.

Sounds like an ad for Big Brother....

loceng3• 13 years ago

Diluting their future profits. And yes, they do need a way to compete with Google and try to gain revenues - understandably.

The model you mention is the same as Google, though Search came first, and Gmail was secondary - though just as valuable.

Re: Ad for Big Brother - I LOL'd. Unfortunately, Big Brother is controlled / manipulated by for profit businesses, who all have individual goals, and that don't care about the greater ecosystem.

goronbjorn2• 13 years ago

> This is good news for both companies, specifically Dropbox. This brings an all new audience to the service, which has become a mainstay in the workplace. The company has yet to crack the consumer area

That's completely backwards. Dropbox started as a consumer tool and is now creeping into the workplace.

DenisM• 13 years ago

Says who?

I don't know a single person who uses dropbox for personal stuff, but I know tons of businesses in the furniture industry that use it all the time. For them it's only second to ftp. So it's my anecdote against yours, showing opposite things.

untog2• 13 years ago

I think it's pretty widely accepted that Dropbox is used for personal stuff a lot. I know at least a dozen people who use it, including people who don't work anywhere near tech.

In fact, remote storing of business data is a huge red flag for a lot of people, so many businesses do not use the service.

wcfields• 13 years ago

True, I thought of it as "cute" and used it to send big WAV files and such between artist friends when collaborating on a project. Really made it easier than walking someone on how to FTP onto my colo webhost.

Then the entire Corp Comms department at my old work used it almost exclusively with all their vendors for PSDs, PPT Slidedecks, TIFFs... Basically any deliverable.

lightup882• 13 years ago

Worth mentioning that companies such as Box specifically position themselves as the enterprise-focused alternative to consumer storage solutions (read: Dropbox).

hoov• 13 years ago

I agree. I think that maybe they got Box and Dropbox mixed up?

kami8845• 13 years ago

>That's completely backwards. Dropbox started as a consumer tool and is now creeping into the workplace.

You're completely behind the curve. People have been using Dropbox to do their work from its' very early days. This is nothing new, they're just making it more "official".

hkmurakami• 13 years ago

Many corporate IT departments (including that of my former employer) unfortunately explicitly block Dropbox :(.

Meanwhile, we did use Box (albeit for very different use cases from Dropbox).

colinsidoti• 13 years ago

Cool. Dropbox seems to be pushing hard to become the goto for email attachments. If Mailbox doesn't win, they'll still have market share with Yahoo.

Mostly surprised Yahoo would do this - I can't imagine we'll be seeing a similar deal with Gmail/Outlook.

mayank• 13 years ago

Gmail already integrates with Google Drive. This is a cheap way for Yahoo to replicate that functionality.

kevingibbon• 13 years ago

Congrats Yahoo! and Dropbox! Looks like a great integration. Very similar to what Attachments.me has done for gmail to Dropbox, Box, Skydrive and Google Drive.

af3• 13 years ago

expect Yahoo! toolbar in the Dropbox installer soon ;)

shanelja• 13 years ago

Is there really any need for this?

Maybe I'm a little traditional but last time I checked Microsoft handled this just fine on their own, is Yahoo Mail really in such a bad place that they need to outsource their file attachment hosting?

When I'm using outlook, I click on a file once and it downloads, simple as that, I don't want to have to screw around signing up for yet another service just to use it.

I don't really care how amazing Dropbox may be, if I have to screw around accessing another service instead of just clicking "download attachment" then the user experience is already ruined for me.

Newky• 13 years ago

Having attachments available across computers/mobile devices can in some cases be a huge win.

I can see it being a disaster in some cases, but I see it as a huge plus in another section.

Dropbox is just about ubiquitous enough for this to be useful.

pyre• 13 years ago

  | is Yahoo Mail really in such a bad place that
  | they need to outsource their file attachment
  | hosting?

I imagine that Yahoo! Mail is similar to Gmail in that there are size limits on the emails that you can send. Your email with attachments can't be over 20 ~ 25Mb on Gmail. I think that Hotmail's limit is around 10MB. Partnering with Dropbox would allow one to use their Dropbox space for much larger files.

  | When I'm using outlook, I click on a file once
  | and it downloads, simple as that, I don't want
  | to have to screw around signing up for yet another
  | service just to use it.

Dropbox allows you to share files publicly, IIRC. They could take this a couple of ways:

- When attaching, the user could be presented with a dialog that allows them to select files already in their Dropbox account. Therefore if you wanted to upload a file, you could drop it into your Dropbox folder, then compose an email.

- When attaching, the user uploads the file to their Dropbox account via the Yahoo! Mail web interface.

Both of these ways will probably create a URL to the file on Dropbox (publicly accessible, private with password, obfuscated single-use URL, etc).

[ Also, we're talking about webmail clients like Yahoo/Gmail/Hotmail. It really seems like you're comparing them to Outlook+Exchange, which is something completely different. ]

joecomotion• 13 years ago

There are three integration points:

- Share from Dropbox: when composing an email, insert a link to a file already in your Dropbox.

- Save to Dropbox: when reading email, save a received attachment to your Dropbox.

- Upload to Dropbox: if you try to attach file over the 25MB attachment size limit, you're given the option to upload it to your Dropbox and link to the file on Dropbox.

megaman821• 13 years ago

All major email providers have pretty low size limits for their email attachments. I believe Hotmail/Outlook uses Skydrive to attach files over 10Mb. Since, Yahoo doesn't have Yahoo Drive they partnered with Dropbox to do the same thing. It seems like a good move to me; get closer to functional parity with your competitors and utilize a very popular file syncing solution.

vidarh4• 13 years ago

> is Yahoo Mail really in such a bad place that they need to outsource their file attachment hosting?

More likely they're in a place where they'd like the referral revenue that's likely involved if/when those users upgrade to a paid Dropbox account.

Pro_bity• 13 years ago

If anyone is curious, this is the first step to monetizing email beyond ads. Fast forward a few years and the store as much content as you want (Gmail model) will be an exception not the rule.

vidarh4• 13 years ago

I very much doubt they'd go a step backwards. Yahoo had a "pay for more storage" option, and it never made much money even with the ludicrously small free storage quota (25MB?).

When Gmail launched and Yahoo panicked and increased limits, they quickly realized that users actual e-mail storage use didn't grow very quickly - it's probably far outpaced by growth in storage densities.

Shifting attachments to Dropbox gives sufficient space for most users on the free tier "forever", but of course Dropbox gives users other benefits which they might very well want to pay for.

taopao• 13 years ago

I wonder what the implications are for legal document retention?

webwanderings3• 13 years ago

Yahoo already had an attachment service through another company. I can't even recall the name of it now.

shawndumas2• 13 years ago

yousendit

webwanderings3• 13 years ago

No I'm sure it was something else.

ngoel36• 13 years ago

Gmail->Mailbox->Dropbox->Yahoo Mail

Yahoo! Mail Partners With Dropbox To Add File Attachments

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