Thousands of Yahoo Mail Users Furious over Redesign
For the sixteenth anniversary of Yahoo Mail, the company decided to surprise its users with a total redesign of form and function—and it was a disaster.
Thousands of Yahoo Mail users are furious over the changes, and they’re being very vocal about it. Some users are upset about the elimination of key functions, but many others are reporting serious technical problems.
Among the actions that backfired is that Yahoo decided to move—or remove—some features that users evidently liked just the way they were, thank you. The option to sort messages by sender has disappeared, users can’t view their folders unless they leave the inbox, and—in a major design oversight—the Delete button is now located right next to the sender name.
Users are also upset about the elimination of the tabs that used to be available for organizing emails. In fact, a comment titled “Please Bring Back Tabs” is the top entry on Yahoo Mail’s forum, with 34,413 votes in agreement (at the time of publication).
The number of glitches reported since the rollout is even more troubling. There are more than six thousand complaints under the “Bug or error” category on Yahoo Mail’s forum, with issues including broken functions such as autosave, deleted drafts, error messages when trying to forward or reply, and emails disappearing from folders or after being sent.
But the most common critique isn’t about how the redesign functions in practice—it’s about the theory behind it in the first place. Essentially, Yahoo Mail users liked it because it was different from the other email options, but the revamped Yahoo Mail inbox has design elements pulled straight from other sources.
Options for background themes include provided images and photos from Flickr, which make the interface look a lot like Yahoo’s Weather app. The new Helvetica Ultra Light typeface takes a page from Apple’s iOS 7. And the inbox layout couldn’t be more like Gmail—right down to the new screen that pops up over the inbox when you compose an email.
It turns out that if Yahoo Mail users wanted their email to look and perform like Gmail—and apparently they do not—they would just use Gmail.
Every redesign has its critics, and it’s possible that there is a contingent of users quite happy with the minimalist makeover. But it’s also possible that in her zeal to continue modernizing the company, Yahoo CEO and President Marissa Mayer has alienated its loyal user base. This seemingly unwanted redesign follows another that received similar backlash when it was implemented less than a year ago.
“I predict that this will be the end of Yahoo if the company doesn't listen to its existing customers,” reads one negative review of Yahoo Mail. “We're not gmail wannabes, no matter what Marissa Mayer thinks… .”
