Yahoo! Mail
Yahoo! made a deal with the online communications company Four11 for co-branded white pages. Marvin Gavin, who worked at Four11 as the Director of International Business Development, said "We always had a bias about being acquired by Yahoo. They were more entrepreneurial than Microsoft. We had a great cultural fit – it made a lot of sense." In the end, Yahoo! acquired Four11 for $96 million. The purpose behind acquiring Four11 was the company's RocketMail webmail service, which launched in 1997. Yahoo! announced the acquisition on October 8, 1997, close to the time that Yahoo! Mail was launched. Yahoo! chose acquisition rather than internal platform development, because, as Healy said, "Hotmail was growing at thousands and thousands users per week. We did an analysis. For us to build, it would have taken four to six months, and by then, so many users would have taken an email account. The speed of the market was critical."
Yahoo! Mail
On September 17, 2010, Yahoo! showed off a new Mail program to reporters. Codenamed "Minty", the 2011 release was announced on September 16, 2010. It included a new interface, enhanced performance, improved Facebook and Twitter integration, the ability to watch YouTube videos straight from email, and improved search. Public beta began on October 26, 2010. In May 2011, the new Yahoo! Mail became the default interface. As the new interface became mandatory for users, some users of Yahoo! Mail reported slow typing speeds, contradicting Yahoo's claims of faster performance. Yahoo! offered no resolution to the problem . Users also missed the ability to paste textual email addresses into the sender box. The new version disabled the use of the "secondary" addresses provided in the previous version. The new interface overrode the browser's right mouse button (making functions such as opening mails in new tab windows unavailable).