Yahoo: Tabs are back
Those of you who have followed my war with the powers-that-be at Yahoo, who had changed virtually every aspect of their email service for the worse, will probably be happy to learn that Yahoo has brought tabs back due to popular demand—or rather, outraged outcry.
But none of the other dearly-departed features have returned.
What is this with arrogant, stupid, unresponsive companies who don’t care one whit about their customers? Is government so all-fired great that they feel it’s a good idea to imitate it?
Yahoo instabilities have caused even me to shift to new e-mail.
I don’t understand how anyone can be so arrogant with a utility service product to not comprehend that STABILITY is ever going to be high on the list of client demands.
Where was the groundswell of demand for stuff that wasn’t in Yahoo?
Cloning Gmail is a fools errand. Whomever went over — is lost anyway — never to return just to get the exact same e-portal.
Take a tip from the Vodka Wars: You leave well enough alone with your primary brand. You compete by introducing an entirely new brand/ e-image/ e-functionality. For vodka, that meant a new price point — down market… and up market.
The difference between the various vodkas is the package. That’s all. (Everyone achieves neutral grain spirits of high purity — and blends down with distilled water. Duh.)
And electrons are a commodity, too. So don’t junk up our bandwith and toss our e-records.
I’ve mentioned this before, so I promise this is the last time.
Those of us who don’t like the user interface for Yahoo mail and Gmail can connect all our webmail accounts to Mozilla Thunderbird (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/).
Thunderbird is free open-source email client software, and it’s very easy to install. If you decide to give it a try, just remember to select the installation option for the email IMAP protocol, rather than the POP protocol.
Here’s a link to step-by-step instructions for the IMAP protocol selection procedure. Screen captures are included. http://pop2imap.com/yahoo_thunderbird.php
After installation and connection to Yahoo, Gmail, or other email servers, Thunderbird becomes your email client and user interface. All your Gmail or Yahoo messages will be delivered to you desktop, and you’ll never need to look at the Yahoo or Gmail webmail interface, unless you want to — e.g. you’re on vacation and have ducked into an internet cafe.
End of sales pitch. Apologies for boring you all.
“What is this with arrogant, stupid, unresponsive companies who don’t care one whit about their customers?”
The motivation is not adulation of government and once a company goes public, their customers are no longer the motivation either.
Publicly traded companies primary motivation is shareholder satisfaction and a rising share price NOT customer satisfaction. That is because the focus of the decision makers, i.e. upper, upper management; generally the VP’s, CEO, CFO and Board… is short term gain (1-10 yrs) because a rising share price translates to high trade-in value on their stock options, generally the bulk of compensation at these levels. Many of the CEO’s are sitting on each other’s boards and voting each other very lucrative ‘golden parachutes’.
The customer becomes a distant concern and that it is a abysmal long term strategy is of little concern, that problem will be the ‘next guys’ problem. Chrysler is a perfect example of the eventual repercussions. I give it less than 5 years before Chrysler is history.
When any company grows beyond a certain point, they are no longer run on democratic principles but more on oligarchy and monarchy principles. Top down structuring, command and control.
The US military generally pushes as much responsibility downwards as feasible, because in war the mobility and tactical flexibility of individuals and individual units makes for some hard to beat combat results.
So long as US companies have to bribe the government to do business, the top down control hierarchies will have an advantage over the bottom up starter corporations.
I think that companies make product changes (often for the worse) simply to make changes… changes that are somehow construed to be ‘upgrades’. New coke for example. I stopped using yahoo for 99% of my email 2+ years ago. Fastmail is spam free, does not make radical changes for the sake of change, and is free as along as you are content to have a bare bones email account.
Neo, I’m begggggggin’ you. Dump it.
GB…
Don’t you mean FIAT?
Chrysler is already a wholly owned enterprise.
Too bad that article didn’t say how to do it, or maybe I missed it in my scan. I’m happy that they brought it back. However, I cannot get attachments to display online, but wait until the messages download into outlook.
Yahoo managed to FUBAR not only their mail but their groups format as well. Most of the Yahoo groups I belong to are now looking for new homes, thanks to Yahoo’s inexplicable urge to smash what had been working perfectly well.
blert,
Chrysler is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fiat. However, I’m unaware of Fiat’s financial stability, so its future viability is an unknown to me. Chrysler’s problems are such however that I am highly doubtful that it can be saved. Which is why I expect Fiat to dissolve Chrysler at some not-too-distant future date.
Cornflour is right. I have been using Thunderbird for years.
I have often wondered about those “arrogant, stupid, unresponsive companies.” I would like to blame the liberal takeover of education, but I can’t actually do that. Arrogance, stupidity and unresponsiveness are qualities that cross all demographic lines and always have. It might just be a control thing – my way is best, so you will do as I say, and screw you if you do not like it. Some people get a little bit of power and it goes to their heads. They completely forget they must serve customers. That’s why competition works, it weans out those pinheads eventually.
Tabs have, in fact, not been returned to all mail accounts. My yahoo account still does not have them (no multitasking option when clicking on ‘view’) and I am not the only one. There has been no attention to this in the tech media, or by yahoo. Despite claiming back in december that a ‘global rollout’ would occur in the next few days, tabs are still MIA for many yahoo users.
Nancy Vogt:
I read somewhere that it’s happening in stages, but that all Yahoo users will have tabs restored before too long.
What “too long” is I have no idea. It’s already been WAY too long in my book.