Yahoo Mail turns 10 yesterday. With just 3 megabytes of storage back then, it’s hard to imagine what we started out with. There was no mobile integration then, limited ways in which to attach files like images, and fewer adopters of web-based services that weren’t directly tied to their ISPs. Yahoo’s put together a cute list of email milestones to help us remember how far we’ve come since 1997. Here it is:
* October 1997: Yahoo! Mail launches following our acquisition of Four 11, creators of RocketMail.
* December 1998: The movie You’ve Got Mail debuts.
* March 1999: CNN’s Ten Commandments of Email cites that Americans sent 2.1 billion emails daily (vs. 196 billion per day this year).
* December 1999: Yahoo! Mail launches Spamguard to detect spam and banish it to a separate folder.
* January 2000: Web mail survives Y2K.
* November 2001: Pope John Paul II is the first pontiff to send an email apology.
* March 2002: It’s reported internationally that email outpaces snail mail as the preferred method for residential communication.
* December 2003: Congress passes the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 to regulate the sending of commercial email.
* July 2004: Yahoo! acquires Oddpost, bringing AJAX to Yahoo! and inspiring Yahoo! Mail’s most significant upgrade ever.
* June 2005: Broadway’s “Spamalot” wins Tony Award for Best Musical.
* March 2006: IDG study shows that Americans sent 11.8 billion photos via email in 2005, compared with 2.6 billion in 2000. By 2009, this number is projected to 25.7 billion images.
* March 2007: Yahoo! Mail announces free, unlimited e-mail storage for all users.
* August 2007: According to Comscore , the worldwide Web mail market counts approximately 543 million people, with Yahoo! Mail alone representing 255 million.
With Yahoo Mail being among its initial flagship products, it’s been interesting to see the evolution of Yahoo as a brand and portal. While Yahoo is still going strong, the company is still striving for the number one spot in areas like search. A recent discussion of its services indicate that it may be worth more if it were broken up as opposed to its services as a whole. Need more nostalgia? Check out the Valley’s introspective look at its future, as well as Google’s own birthday celebration.
[via mashable]
