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Home » Yahoo email degenerates further in the name of progress

Yahoo email degenerates further in the name of progress

The New Neo Posted on by

I know, I know—you’re going to tell me to change email addresses if I don’t like the latest iteration of Yahoo email. But it’s a royal pain to do so, and I’ve had my Yahoo email for so so long.

Also, I’ve got other email addresses (Gmail, for example) and they’ve got their own problems and are no better, just different. With every “improvement” in recent years, each email format has gotten worse. Your mileage may differ, but that’s been my observation. I’m not going to bore you by listing my complaints, but I’ve had a particular beef with the trendy never-ending scroll that long ago replaced pages on Yahoo, and slows loading down to a crawl as well as jumping around.

But much worse is the fact that, after a period of allowing consumers to keep the old format if they wish, there’s a forced change to the new. That forced change is usually preceded by some weeks or months when every single time a person goes to the site he/she is presented with a pop-up asking if the person wants to change to the new, improved email. They’re hoping you say “yes” just out of sheer exhaustion—just to get that pop-up to stop—or that one time you’ll slip up and carelessly and unintentionally activate the new format from which there’s no turning back.

This is the way they currently do it on Yahoo email. The pop-up reads:

It’s time to upgrade your inbox
This version of Yahoo Mail will no longer be available. We encourage you to upgrade to the newest version of Yahoo Mail now.

In other words: we’ll get you sooner or later, so you might as well surrender now and it will be easier for you in the long run. Resistance is futile.

This is followed by the “choice” between two tabs:

Upgrade now / Automatically upgrade next time

Where’s the “never never never upgrade” tab? Yes, I know; that’s not one of your choices.

But each time you see the pop-up, if you keep your wits about you and don’t absent-mindedly click on one of those two ever-so-helpful tabs, you can click on that little “x” in the upper corner and make that little sucker go away. But it’s surprisingly difficult to avoid the blandishments of the tabs, because we do so many things online almost automatically, and the people who design these things know all about how to gently coax you into doing what they want you to do.

So far I’ve stuck to my guns and clicked on that little “x.” But someday that “x” will disappear and the message will just say, “Welcome to the new and improved Yahoo email…” [emphasis mine]”:

Mirrors on the ceiling
The pink champagne on ice
And she said: “We are all just prisoners here
Of our own device”
And in the master’s chambers
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives
But they just can’t kill the beast
Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
“Relax,” said the night man
“We are programmed to receive
You can check out any time you like
But you can never leave!”

Note the use of terms such as “device” and “programmed.” Prescient?

Comments

Yahoo email degenerates further in the name of progress — 24 Comments

  1. Yup, my email host has been telling me for a year or so that the new, improved version will soon be available. I’m ignoring them as long as I can.

  2. I totally agree, and I actually work in technology. Don’t even get me started on Windows 10.

  3. Tom:

    I have been nursing my ancient computer along for many years because I am preserving Windows 7.

  4. Me too, Neo. I have had learn Windows 10 for work though, because Windows 7 support will be ending soon. Most companies have either already gone to Windows 10, or are in the process of “upgrading” to Windows 10. So my work computer and all of the computers I support are now Windows 10. I have yet to see any advantages to it, other than for Microsoft. They’ve changed where everything that’s required to do my job is, so it’s like learning a whole new OS all over again. Something I’ve done repeatedly since Windows 3.1. (I told you I shouldn’t get started) hahahahaha

  5. neo: WIndows 7 forever!

    Except Windows 7 won’t run on the more recent Intel CPUs. When I upgraded my ThinkPad, the T470 was the latest model I could buy and still be W7 compatible.

    I don’t know what I’m going to do further down the line. OTOH, since Moore’s Law is pooping out, there is no longer the need (or lust!) to upgrade every 2-3 years.

    I do hate those Upgrade Now / Upgrade Later options. If they were actually fixing bugs in upgrades, I might be more receptive. But generally software doesn’t become more reliable over time. They aren’t fixing bugs; they are adding checkbox features for marketing and more spyware.

  6. Tom: If I were still programming professionally, I would have to bite the bullet for Windows 10 or switch to Mac or Linux.

  8. If you have a history option, (I use FFox, which does) go to “show all history” and look down the list for your yahoo email pages. There will be two different Yahoo logos for your email…one is a big Y, the other is an envelope followed by “inbox ( ##)” (##being the number of unopened emails). Choose the envelope and it will open in the old style email. Open the one with the big Y, and you get the new version.
    I have two yahoo email boxes – one for personal stuff, one for all the sites that require me to give them an email address, but I know they’re going to send me ad stuff all the time. My junk mail box, I messed up and switched to the new format – I don’t care, because I just go in about once every week or two and delete everything. My personal email box, I _do_ care, and definitely prefer the old format. If I log in from the main page, I get the new format. If I use my history instead, I can get the old format.

  9. Recently several email addresses on my Yahoo mail have disappeared. Don’t know where they went too, but they are gone.

    I have too many things with my Yahoo email for me to change.

  10. As someone who’s done professional software development for over 30 years, my inescapable conclusion is that most people who design and develop software are idiots, or are managed by idiots (this is much more common), and the industry as a whole has completely forgotten all the hard-won advances in usability and human-computer interaction that were made in the 80s and early 90s.

    Microsoft, in particular, used to be one of the best in my opinion, but somewhere around the late 90s or early 2000s, they started turning over their design to artsy-fartsy types rather than experts in human-computer interaction, and in the past 5 years or so, have apparently fired the artists and hired wild monkeys, or perhaps aliens from the planet Zoobie.

    Most other companies have had a very similar process. I don’t use Apple products, but I’ve heard a lot of the same from Apple users. Everything nowadays is style over substance, and even basic things like login forms are becoming cryptic and confusing because of the absurd style of trying to make everything look like blank white space.

    tl;dr I’m a software guy. My industry is incompetent.

  11. I also still have a Yahoo Mail account, and every morning, I get a ‘News’ email from them. A very high % of the time, these emails are strongly anti-Trump in their orientation.

    Yahoo is owned by Verizon, which also owns Huffington Post, as part of the business unit which they ridiculously called ‘Oath’. (They have since changed the name and taken a multi-billion-dollar writedown on these acquisitions)

  12. I think everyone should take the pledge to give up google/facebook/twitter/yahoo and maybe others. I am in the process of doing this and there are many fine alternatives that make it a feature to preserve your privacy. Some alternatives

    email: protonmail. Has good web interface (protonmail.com) plus android and iOS apps

    search engine: duckduckgo or if you must use google for an item that is not turning up use ixQuick/startpage.

    facebook/twitter: just say no

  13. Search engine: Bing works pretty well for most things, and the home-page images are lot nicer than the google doodles. Neither Bing nor DuckDuckGo seems to work reliably for quoted strings; ie, when you want the precise phrase rather than just the individual words occurring in it.

    Never tried ixQuick, have to check it out.

  14. Re interface design in general, I notice a proliferation of sites which are so graphics-intensive that it is difficult to find out the actual information you’re looking for.

    Also, quite a few commercial websites are too slow, probably due to under-investment in hosting capability or provisioning of comm circuits to same. Makes no sense to stand on your own revenue air hose. And I predict that with 5G and with ever-faster home Internet connections, the server capacity will in many cases be such a bottleneck that the customer won’t even notice any improvement from his theoretically-faster connection.

  16. “Microsoft, in particular, used to be one of the best in my opinion, but somewhere around the late 90s or early 2000s, they started turning over their design to artsy-fartsy types …” — Rick G.

    I agree except I suspect that the majority of the code writing/debugging/testing is now left up to low wage H1B visa holders.

    Remember how the greenies and some financial types used to talk about “peak oil”? I think that “peak software (quality)” came and went around the year 2000, and we’ve been sliding downward ever since.

    I’ve been completely converted to Win10 for a few years and while it is semi-usable I would love to go back to Win7.
    _____

    How about them Eagles? Nice concert clip. Four guitarists, or five guitar necks; how else are you going to have a lead guitar duet? Plus at least 3 guys that can sing really well.

  18. MacAddict here. Since our first Mac Plus — I think it was — back in the ’80s.

    Mac OS 9 was very good for its time, in the later ’90s. I began my life with Mac notebooks with a G3 Powerbook (gray screen, green letters) and it still works, but I yearned for something better, so I got the last of the G4 PowerBooks at then end of 2003. Ran with OS X 10.3.3, Panther. Updated to 10.3.4 and my Guardian angel told me that no subsequent update would be better. The G4 is a tank, still runs fine with OS X 10.3.4 and Firefox to match, though it no longer gets every last website … but you’d be surprised. I think it still gets YT, though I haven’t checked in the last year or two. The only problem I ever had with it was that the power supply died, and I had to replace it with a 3rd-party PS. And the battery has been pushing up daisies for about 8 years now. 10.3.4 Panther was quite a good OS, and from reading reviews of 10.4 and then 10.5 I was not impressed with either.

    In 2010 I couldn’t resist the urge and I got a 2009-release MacBook Pro, with OS X 10.6.something. I updated through the last 10.6, which was 10.6.8. That is still my preferred OS, though it has no support and is long out-of-date. But I think it is the best of the Mac OS’s [apostrophe for clarity despite the Rule]; and in just the last few months I’ve discovered that that’s the opinion of many Mac users. 🙂

    Several years ago I got a MacBook Air to use when travelling. It came with OS X 10.9, “Mavericks.” Usable but not nearly as good as 10.6.8. But I surely haven’t heard of anything that sounds remotely better, so here I am still running it — even though some sites such as my VISA bank will no longer accept this “antiquated” system, which is a pain. At least I’ve never been stupid enough to “go paperless,” although I do have autopay on my telephone.

    So, the quality of the Mac systems has been going down for many years, as far as I’m concerned.

    If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Even though the explanation for the frequent updates is supposed to be that that’s the only way to defeat the malefactors who haunt Cyberspace.

    As for Windows, my first machine for travelling was an Acer that I got 10 years ago. It still runs — with XP. I never heard of a MS system after XP that sounded anywhere near as sturdy.

    I also concur with the opinions of everybody else here about the quality of Yahoo e-mail. As far as I’m concerned the wreckage began in 2009, and has continued non-stop. But it’s still my main address. I do have another outfit for my dearest-friends-only to use, unfortunately now down to just one correspondent. :>(

    And a g-mail account for the junk mail that you get as soon as you sign up for a Google or Dreadful Disqus account. I never even look at it.

    Personally, I think that the best of the Computer Age and the Internet has came and went, at least for personal users.

    Thanks for the opportunity to go vent my own unhappiness with the way the quality of the software systems has fallen.

  19. Ya know, you can keep your Yahoo account but use any email program you want. I really like Thunderbird for an email client.

  20. It was “Oath” that finally got me to change several things, my yahoo email being the first to go – I chose fastmail.com. Verizon was the second – I chose AT&T, and have very few apps (not even voicemail). I do have a gmail account because I wanted their fiber internet. I figure everything I do on the internet is somehow tracked, but dang… google fiber is so much better and cheaper than comcast, I’m a willing victim. It’s certainly no worse than “Oath”. What I need to do is change my passwords more frequently for whatever accounts I think are important… but that’s a PITA.

  21. Let’s be a bit more technical. Email format doesn’t change, since it is an international standard (with exceptions like AOL which does weird things for internal AOL mail). What does change is the front end that you use. When you use Yahoo’s web based mail interface or email app, you are art their mercy. But most email providers also provide a more universal access, either POP3 or IMAP for incoming mail, and SMTP for outgoing mail. I used to use POP3, but now have switched over to IMAP for incoming mail, because it allows you to sync between various platforms (in my case 2 Windows laptops, one desktop, 4 iPads, and 2 iPhones). I use Thunderbird from Mozilla on Windows machines (I am sure that there are better email programs, but Thunderbird has even fairly consistent for better than a decade for me) and the built in Mail program for my IOS devices. Both Thunderbird and IOS Mail allow multiple accounts, which can be advantageous.

  22. As far as I can tell, no new version of anything is an improvement on it’s predecessor. And the dratted kids will NOT get off of my lawn. What a stupid world. 🙂

  23. Mail.com, rather than gmail.

    Other than an annoying nagging when you don’t logout normally, I’ve mostly switched to mail.com for everything.

  24. Switch to protonmail.com

    As private and secure as it gets, nowadays

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