When I read the original article I found myself wondering if I have just worked in a corporate environment too long to find the memo odd. I don't find it unreasonable at all to use the mail portal of choice for the company. When I'm on my own time I use the standards I prefer, but while I'm on company time if they want me to use outlook or yahoo mail or anything else it doesn't seem crazy to just use that and hope it works well.
It also seemed weird to me that it was a plea to the company to change over, rather than just a roll out/move over.
And it demonstrates an utter contempt for their internal users. Instead of a vaguely condescending email scolding, I would suggest they sit with resistant users and understand why people haven't switched. It may uncover genuine insights that can be addressed either in the product or in the communication. This is a terrible way to run products.
While I agree the tone is extremely off putting, I think that's what it's getting at. By using what's being made, they'll be able to get the feedback you're talking about.
Well, standard Yahoo! Mail has IMAP and POP support, so they could theoretically pull it into Gmail. They could also forward it. But I'm guessing all of those options are a violation of company policies.
The memo appears to be talking specifically about internal corporate email. Did Yahoo! ever sign up for Google Apps? I doubt it, in which case they are probably trying to get people to migrate from Outlook 2007.
Hello Yahoos,
Earlier this year we asked you to move to Yahoo Mail for your corporate email account. 25% of you made the switch (thank you). But even if we used the most generous of grading curves (say, the one from organic chemistry), we have clearly failed in our goal to move our co-workers to Yahoo Mail.
It’s time for the remaining 75% to make the switch. Beyond the practical benefits of giving feedback to your colleagues on the Mail team, as a company it’s a matter of principle to use the products we make. (BTW, same for Search.)
For some reading this email, you are saying, “Jeff, shut up, you had me at hello.” hug Jump over to yo/dogfood, click “Corp Mail/Cal/ Messenger” and you are ready to join our brave new world at yo/corpmail or https://mail.yahoo-inc.com.
For others, you might now be running in your head to a well worn path of justified resistance, phoning up the ol’ gang, circling the hippocampian wagons of amygdalian resistance. Hold on a sec, pilgrim.
First, it doesn’t feel like we are asking you to abandon some glorious place of communications nirvana. At this point in your life, Outlook may be familiar, which we can often confuse with productive or well designed. Certainly, we can admire the application for its survival, an anachronism of the now defunct 90s PC era, a pre-web program written at a time when NT Server terrorized the data center landscape with the confidence of a T-Rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents who fully bought into the illusion of their son’s utter uniqueness because the big-mouthed, tiny-armed monster infant could mimic the gestures of The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl. There was a similar outcry when we moved away from Outlook’s suite-mates in the Microsoft Office dreadnaught. But whether it’s familiarity, laziness or simple stubbornness dressed in a cloak of Ayn Randian Objectivism, the time has come to move on, commrade [sic...go deep in this pun, it is layered].
Using corp mail from the Y Mail web interface is remarkably feature rich. It supports booking conference rooms, folders, calendar, filters and global address book. Plus, you get built-in Messenger, smart conversation threading, powerful keyboard shortcuts, the new quick actions, attachment preview and our beautiful new rich themes. In the rare case you do need Outlook, like adding a delegate for your calendar, you can still fire up Outlook for 30 seconds.
But wait there’s more. By using corporate Mail, you’ll automatically get to dogfood our new features first. I’m especially excited about a new feature premiering in just a few more days: smart auto-suggest, powered by a platform from the still-have-that-new-acquisition-smell Xobni team. We have been testing this feature with select users in and out of the company and the response has been fantastic: “Whoa!”, “Amazing”, “Already in love with it. Woot!” and, my favorite, “So nicely integrated that it appears as if it’s always been there. I already can’t imagine it not being there again.”
Feeling that little tingle? Take a deep breath, you can do this. We want you on board, sailor!
Please note, on the mobile side, corp mail is not yet supported in our Mail app for Android or iOS, but that will change (PB&J!). And, like all dogfood offerings, there is a feedback link in the product. Use it generously so we can make the improvements to make Yahoo Mail the unquestioned inbox champion of the world. I pitty [sic] the fool who resists.
Thanks for your support. It really does matter and we appreciate it.
Jeff Bonforte, SVP Communications Products
Randy Roumillat, CIO
> At this point in your life, Outlook may be familiar, which we can often confuse with productive or well designed. Certainly, we can admire the application for its survival, an anachronism of the now defunct 90s PC era, a pre-web program written at a time when NT Server terrorized the data center landscape
I don't get this sentiment. I know plenty of people who are very productive with Outlook and see no reason to sway them away from it. In fact this is why Office 365 is killing it right now.
The funniest thing about Outlook being an anachronism from their perspective is this paragraph: "Please note, on the mobile side, corp mail is not yet supported in our Mail app for Android or iOS, but that will change (PB&J!)."
Desktop only in this day and age is pretty anachronistic too.
Office 365 is killing it because Microsoft is entrenched in enterprise. They aren't leaving any time soon, no matter what Apple, Google, Yahoo!, or any Random Startup X does.
It has less to do with the quality of the service, its ease of use, or whether or not people actually like using it than the above note about entrenchment.
Well, this is an internal memo beating the drum to get their own people to use their product. It's not all that surprising that it isn't a fair and balanced discussion of Outlook's pros and cons.
EDIT: Come to think of it, this is an interesting attempt at manipulating people. He claims that Outlook is an outdated piece of technology straight from the 90's and literally paints the picture of a dinosaur. Tech people - who are probably the main target audience for this memo - oftentimes take pride in being in the know about the latest technologies and invest quite a bit of time and effort in being on the bleeding edge. Those paragraphs are actually an insult in disguise designed to get people by their pride about being behind the times.
I guess my comment is more directed at the following:
1. If you're going to promote design-thinking in a company (which I believe Yahoo needs to do in order to grow) than making comments like this is a disservice. This creates a culture of "well if it's old and looks like shit then it must be shit" that should instead be "listen to your audience".
2. This is also talking about the sentiment from outside of Yahoo (and possibly in the echo chamber of HN). I get why Yahoo internally would say it, which I would then revert back to my point #1.
Yahoo Mail looks like GMail and it pretty much works the same. Same goes for the new Outlook. So theres no motivation to switch when I have all my stuff at Google already.
"with the confidence of a T-Rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents who fully bought into the illusion of their son’s utter uniqueness because the big-mouthed, tiny-armed monster infant could mimic the gestures of The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl." - This is trying too hard
I think it's just down-right unprofessional. I don't work in SV, but if the president of my company wrote something like that he would have been laughed at.
Making things "cutesy" and "funny", is just an obnoxious way to hide your true intentions. It's disrespectful to the intelligence of the people you are talking to. If you're the boss and you insist your subordinates use some product, then straight up say that. Don't try to be "nice" about it because it sounds fake and insulting.
Where I work now (.edu) I am seeing more and more people use personal webmail (mostly gmail) for all their email instead of the enterprise offering (outlook/exchange). The reason is just so they don't have to deal with the IT bureaucracy.
> Using corp mail from the Y Mail web interface is remarkably feature rich. It supports booking conference rooms, folders, calendar, filters and global address book. Plus, you get built-in Messenger, smart conversation threading, powerful keyboard shortcuts, the new quick actions, attachment preview and our beautiful new rich themes.
This is more than just Gmail. Well, I never worked at Google so I don't know how they manage meetings and room booking. It can be pretty useful in my opinion. For work, you really should forward mails to your work email and I mean a separate email account.
It does look like GMail, but the veneer is fairly thin. It is slow and buggy. And the transition for existing users was poorly thought through. It is Gmail with 90% of the look 75% of the features, and 50% of the polish. I'm a daily user of both, and have defended Yahoo Mail in the past, but GMail is obviously better now that they are so easily compared.
The best part about being out of yahoo employees being out of touch is they want to stay with outlook. Hopefully Marissa can go G+ on them and force them to switch... they login to outlook one day, and then boom its purple.
This email does make me cringe, but I think Yahoo is certainly getting a slice of the best and brightest from new college graduates. I was interviewing onsite recently and everyone interviewing there were from some of the best schools in the country.
There's not a single word of admittance of any problems Yahoo mail has other than mentioning one missing feature. If I were an employee, I'd basically be thinking that my feedback wouldn't matter because they haven't made any effort to prove that they know what common problems are and therefore can actively work on a solution.
Granted, that's how I feel about most "give us feedback" forms. I'd feel a lot better if they listed a few things that actually came out of the suggestions, or things that were popular from that suggestion form that were changed using some feedback (frequently devs actually already know whats wrong and feedback can just be for a little prioritization, but there's nothing lost in giving the userbase a pat on the back).
Formatted version of OP (I had a hard time reading the single giant paragraph):
==================================
Hello Yahoos,
Earlier this year we asked you to move to Yahoo Mail for your corporate email account. 25% of you made the switch (thank you). But even if we used the most generous of grading curves (say, the one from organic chemistry), we have clearly failed in our goal to move our co-workers to Yahoo Mail.
It’s time for the remaining 75% to make the switch. Beyond the practical benefits of giving feedback to your colleagues on the Mail team, as a company it’s a matter of principle to use the products we make. (BTW, same for Search.)
For some reading this email, you are saying, “Jeff, shut up, you had me at hello.” hug Jump over to yo/dogfood, click “Corp Mail/Cal/ Messenger” and you are ready to join our brave new world at yo/corpmail or https://mail.yahoo-inc.com.
For others, you might now be running in your head to a well worn path of justified resistance, phoning up the ol’ gang, circling the hippocampian wagons of amygdalian resistance. Hold on a sec, pilgrim.
First, it doesn’t feel like we are asking you to abandon some glorious place of communications nirvana. At this point in your life, Outlook may be familiar, which we can often confuse with productive or well designed. Certainly, we can admire the application for its survival, an anachronism of the now defunct 90s PC era, a pre-web program written at a time when NT Server terrorized the data center landscape with the confidence of a T-Rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents who fully bought into the illusion of their son’s utter uniqueness because the big-mouthed, tiny-armed monster infant could mimic the gestures of The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl. There was a similar outcry when we moved away from Outlook’s suite-mates in the Microsoft Office dreadnaught. But whether it’s familiarity, laziness or simple stubbornness dressed in a cloak of Ayn Randian Objectivism, the time has come to move on, commrade [sic...go deep in this pun, it is layered].
Using corp mail from the Y Mail web interface is remarkably feature rich. It supports booking conference rooms, folders, calendar, filters and global address book. Plus, you get built-in Messenger, smart conversation threading, powerful keyboard shortcuts, the new quick actions, attachment preview and our beautiful new rich themes. In the rare case you do need Outlook, like adding a delegate for your calendar, you can still fire up Outlook for 30 seconds.
But wait there’s more. By using corporate Mail, you’ll automatically get to dogfood our new features first. I’m especially excited about a new feature premiering in just a few more days: smart auto-suggest, powered by a platform from the still-have-that-new-acquisition-smell Xobni team. We have been testing this feature with select users in and out of the company and the response has been fantastic: “Whoa!”, “Amazing”, “Already in love with it. Woot!” and, my favorite, “So nicely integrated that it appears as if it’s always been there. I already can’t imagine it not being there again.”
Feeling that little tingle? Take a deep breath, you can do this. We want you on board, sailor!
Please note, on the mobile side, corp mail is not yet supported in our Mail app for Android or iOS, but that will change (PB&J!). And, like all dogfood offerings, there is a feedback link in the product. Use it generously so we can make the improvements to make Yahoo Mail the unquestioned inbox champion of the world. I pitty [sic] the fool who resists.
Thanks for your support. It really does matter and we appreciate it.
> as a company it’s a matter of principle to use the products we make
Oh dear. You know, if you can't convince your people to use your offering, that's a signalling mechanism, if you make people use your offering that's denying you that mechanism,
I loved Yahoo! products. Back there in 1999-2000 Yahoo to me was a cool, humble, yet pioneer company. Their chat was cool, at the same level of ICQ. Their mail was cool too. The search was decent.
Yahoo! lost some of their coziness image and product. I loved their HTML3 look, to be honest, and most of the stuff the guys did. I wish I can make products for them and bring their productivity and usefulness back.
I am 80% sure I saw a "go/xxx" URL on a banner in a Microsoft office building in 2005, so it could be they both copied someone else. That said, it's a pretty good convention so I'm not surprised it got copied to multiple places, wherever it started.
The thing that sucks about web mail is that when your browser closes, you might never see any of your messages again.
Let's say you get fired, due to a blazing inferno of inter-office politics at IniTrode. Let's say you are wrongfully fired. Let's say there was a damning e-mail sitting in your inbox to prove it.
Whoops! When you got fired, you lost access to your e-mail login. All your mail sits server-side now, and you have no proof of your transgression.
With an IMAP client, you can stay in the habit of retaining a stale cache of messages on your local machine. But if you drop that habit, in favor of a web interface, well ...beware of political lightning strikes. You might find yourself the victim of a lockout.
Everything disappears with a lost login, when it comes to the web interface. Not so with traditional e-mail clients.
Seems reasonable this is hardly an over the top request. He didn't say you can't ever use other email but for corporate email use yahoo. As you know, they pay you.
It also seemed weird to me that it was a plea to the company to change over, rather than just a roll out/move over.