Yahoo! Mail Gets “Ads” Upgrade

June 8, 2007 at 6:53 am · Hot Web Topics
Tags: ads, dsl, email, Gmail, upgrade, webmail, Yahoo

+ Remove These New Yahoo! Mail Beta Ads!

Yahoo Mail Gets Ads Well I guess it finally happened sometime last night. The nice sleek and clean interface of Yahoo! Mail became ad-tastic. As an AT&T DSL customer I was getting the “plus” E-mail pack with my Web mail from Yahoo. I have been over this story before though.

I don’t mind ads on Web sites that are more “general” - that isn’t what bugs me. I just don’t like ads in my applications - such as Web mail, feed readers, ect.

Here is some feedback from others who don’t like being in the same boat:

I am on the phone with Yahoo At&T right now and they maintain that this is a part of their world class service. They are actually telling me that over the phone! It does get better, they are trying to give me a case ID that….you guessed it….they cannot send via email! I am a mail plus customer as well, no way I am sticking around and paying for something like this. Off to Google and GMail.

I’m a paid AT&T/Yahoo Mail, and first the very fist time I’ve found it being “decorated” and “laced” with all sorts of ads. I suppose I’d just have live with them now.

The ads hit my inbox tonight. Unacceptably obtrusive and annoying. I cannot believe paying DSL customers are being treated this way. No way I’m gonna send AT&T/Yahoo more money for an ad-free “plus” account. That is part of what I’ve been paying for the past several years. Time to change my homepage to Google and set-up a G-mail account.

So looks like I have two options that I’d consider going with. Go out and find a Greasemonkey script to take ‘em out or go give my money to Google for their apps service. I’m starting to lean towards the Gmail option - just got to find the time to give Yahoo a swift kick in the rear and a wave goodbye.

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Comments and Feedback

Kyle Eslick said on June 8, 2007 @ 8:36 pm

People still use Yahoo Mail?!?

Mitch said on June 9, 2007 @ 11:17 am

Hehe, well it is official - just spent my morning moving everything over to Gmail.

Switching from Yahoo! Mail to Gmail said on June 11, 2007 @ 5:01 am

[...] I spent Saturday morning making the big switch from Yahoo! Mail (who screwed me over royally with the ad-fest they started) to Gmail. I really had not used Gmail that much since the [...]

andyo said on June 12, 2007 @ 3:01 pm

Hi, I found your blog through google, and I am also very annoyed at this. I left a comment in your other post, here, where I have some tips on how to block and hide these ads using Adblock Plus. As you can see, it’s not perfect, but it works. I hope that there is customer backlash for this. I know that people who paid for Yahoo mail did it mainly for the ad-free interface. Who the hell cares for more than 2GB of storage?

Boy, Yahoo is going the wrong way. I didn’t care much for Yahoo photos, but it seemed to be getting better after the facelift, letting you download full-size pictures if you had a Yahoo account, but now it’s closing in favor of the dreadful Flick thing. Oh well.

Damien said on June 14, 2007 @ 6:07 pm

I have to agree. I’m paying for this service, I should not be forced to have ads in my web mail. Save those ads for the free e-mail user, not the PAYING subscribers…

Damien said on June 14, 2007 @ 6:20 pm

And what’s even better is if I don’t want ads in the web mail I’m already PAYING for, I can upgrade to business mail for only $9.99 per month. LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!

Mitch said on June 14, 2007 @ 10:27 pm

Yep, biggest problem I had with scripts that blocked the ads is it still leaves the ugly blank spot where the ads used to be. Sure it is better than that wrinkle cream ad I was seeing - but not what I want to look at.

andyo said on June 15, 2007 @ 1:55 am

Sorry, I wil double-post. I posted this by mistake in your other post.

Hi again. I found the yahoo mail thread where people are complaining like crazy about this. If my eyes are not deceiving me, has the tower ad shrunk just a bit? Anyway, feel free to leave your complaints there, I guess.

http://yodel.yahoo.com/2007/05/14/unlimited-storage-its-coming/

andyo said on June 15, 2007 @ 2:14 am

heh, I just checked against the screenshots I took before, and it’s the same size. Now the ads are playing with my mind!

Paige Me said on June 15, 2007 @ 5:17 pm

I too am really irritated by the addition of ads to my mail account when I am paying for the ATT DSL service. I am looking at two options, returning to my previous local internet provider who now has DSL service (and clean mail) or switching to a cable package. My “year subscription” with ATT is just about up so BYE BYE to ATT. Can only make a point to these people by not paying them anymore. I could try the ad block program but that means still paying ATT for such nonsense. Glad to see I am not the only one who feels this ripped off.

andyo said on June 18, 2007 @ 4:18 am

Hey, anyone know of any other forums discussing this? The yahoo mail comments seems to be closed, or censored. In any case, I have noticed something else. People from my yahoo address book that have a yahoo address have been added to my yahoo messenger contact list! So they have gotten unsolicited and unwanted (from me) messenger invitations and requests.

This has got to be more annoying and orders of magnitude more intrusive than the ads.

andyo said on June 18, 2007 @ 7:06 am

Hmm, it seems that only some of them have been added. I don’t know how many of them received unsent (by me) messages from me. Oh well, yahoo is done for to me. I don’t know how they manage to do such a 180 after I was so pleased with the mail beta. This messenger crap is also very annoying.

Gary L said on June 18, 2007 @ 12:43 pm

There is a big discussion at the following site.

http://yodel.yahoo.com/2007/05/14/unlimited-storage-its-coming

I followed the advice I found on other forums; I downloaded Mozilla Firefox and made it my default web browser. I then installed AdBlock utility. Firefox lets me bring in Yahoo Beta mail but it blocks out the animated ads. It leaves a blank space on the right of the screen, but hey, I still have the Yahoo experience. Folders, contacts stay the same. Yahoo even supports Firefox by allowing the import of the Yahoo toolbar into the firefox browser.

Mitch said on June 18, 2007 @ 1:38 pm

Yeah, the only problem is the big blank spot where that ads used to be is a ‘bit annoying. Wish there was some sort of hack or script to get rid of it.

andyo said on June 20, 2007 @ 6:04 pm

Hi again,

So now they put the arrow to “hide” the big tower ad (or blank space for some of us). I am guessing now someone with more skills than I could write a greasemonkey script that does it automatically, seeing that the freaking ad comes back whenever you click on any other message?

I have no idea how to do greasemonkey, but it seems like a doable thing.

andyo said on June 27, 2007 @ 2:46 pm

Hi there. I found a greasemonkey script that gets rid of the blank space at the right-hand side of the page.

FOR WHATEVER THE HELL IT’S WORTH. DAMN YOU YAHOO!.

I would still advise people to just switch email providers though. I am so pissed with this lack of respect. Why do we have to suffer the ads just so free users can have unlimited storage too? This just shows that Yahoo only cares about desperately getting new free customers since most of us are locked in with AT&T’s DSL monopoly in some areas.

Mitch said on June 27, 2007 @ 2:53 pm

Works great, I’ll have to blog about this one soon. Thanks for finding the fix andyo!

Block New Yahoo! Mail Beta Ads - Firefox Facts said on June 30, 2007 @ 8:30 am

[...] have been fighting my own battle with the new Yahoo! Mail beta ads for some time now. Thanks to their partnership with my DSL [...]

Wayne Brenner said on July 22, 2007 @ 1:58 pm

I am also upset about the new ads, particularly about the right side of screen being lost to banner. I am a premium user, buying the fastest, most expensive DSL that they offer, and now I get the NetZero treatment on my email page?

Something that I noticed - when I tried to access my email at work, on a smaller monitor screen, the right side advertisement was the same size as it was on my larger home screen; it was just the useful side of my email that shrunk.

A couple of months ago, I called AT&T, to see what I could do to limit the amount of mortgage calls that I was getting on my home phone, which was around ten calls per day. I had already put myself on the do-not-call list, the I purchased a package from AT&T that included a selective blocking feature, and privacy manager. What a surprise it was, a couple of months later, that AT&T (/Yahoo) started sponsoring mortgage ads on my email page, while tooting their anti-spam filters.

The Firefox extension doesn’t seem to be the way to go, because you still lose the right side of screen. I want that right side returned!

Sri said on September 5, 2007 @ 7:10 am

I just installed Norton Internet Security 2007 “Ad Blocking”, which is included in the “Add-On Pack”, and it blocks all the ads in AT&T Yahoo email. I had switched to another provider, but went back and tested AT&T Yahoo after the install.

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