[ilamont]

Long-time Yahoo mail user here (it's actually hard for me to admit this; I've noticed in software/tech circles that Yahoo increasingly has a stigma attached to it, not unlike AOL in '90s.)

Anyway, one big difference I notice with Gmail and Yahoo mail is Google actively develops and improves the parts of the service that is visible to users. Every few months there is a significant update (recent ones that come to mind: G+ integration, new inbox design, some new templates, etc.).

Yahoo mail not only fails to add/integrate new services, it doesn't even bother with basic tweaks that it can see over on the competition (Gmail). For instance, Gmail has this very prominent and useful feature: "Always show images from [e-mail]". Yahoo mail? It's still on a message-by-message basis. It's irritating, but also kind of sad -- Yahoo has a popular service that's still used by millions of people, but doesn't seem to care. The same can be said about Flickr, too.

[eftpotrm]

Yeah, I'll give GMail that. Yahoo's image handling does seem a little hit and miss - I've got some senders to always show, somehow, but it's not as good.

But every time I use GMail now I find myself using keyboard shortcuts from Yahoo and wondering why they don't work. The interface jusst seems ugly and crude. Filtering I don't find as good - sorry, I've tried their labelling system, I disagree it's better and the setup interface is poor. I've noticed the spam folder grabs a lot more false positives, too.

GMail is good, sure, but I odn't in any way regard it as a stand-out leader. Yahoo Mail may not be improving as fast as we'd like but it's frankly still a very good product.