[Techtalk] importing mail from Yahoo

[Wim De Smet]

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 3:29 AM, Cynthia Kiser <cnk at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> Quoting Laura Fields <laurajfields at gmail.com>:
>> I recently had the same problem.  As Christine pointed out, you have to pay
>> Yahoo to get POP access, but Gmail recently added a free import feature that
>> will go and retrieve your mail from yahoo.  Once it's in gmail you can use
>> Thunderbird or any other client to store it locally (or you can just use
>> Gmail).
>>
>>  It worked great for me -- retrieved thousands of messages in within a few
>> hours with basically no effort from me.  Within Gmail, you just go to
>> settings (top right of page) and then choose "accounts and import" and
>> follow the instructions.
>
> Oh my. That is great for the consumer. But it does make me feel like
> Google is out to crush Yahoo! I don't pay a lot of attention to Yahoo
> (actually none at all until a friend of mine started to work for
> them). But this does make me start wondering if I need to take more
> seriously those who are warning about online monoculture/monopolies.

As long as you can get your data out easily (and google generally
makes that very easy) I wouldn't worry too much about it. In fact, I'd
be more worried about Yahoo!. The deal with Microsoft pretty much
means they've given up on their core business, which makes me wonder
what exactly is going to keep Yahoo! afloat, except for marketing
dollars. Personally I'm really wondering what they're thinking about
Yahoo!, perhaps they're finally ready to sell the company to MS.

> Anyone know what the economics of "free email" are? Are either Yahoo!
> or Google making enough on ads to pay for all the infrastructure for
> their mail services?

Google might, but I'm not sure. I wonder if they're even sure
themselves. A lot of that infrastructure is, after all, shared between
their services.

regards,
Wim