If they do this, it could be huge. BUT, they need to make a clear incentive to do so - the iPhone app market is growing so quickly because people are reading the stories of $30.000 in a weekend and all that. If there is a clear way of making money on an email app, Yahoo will have a slew of apps, and this could solve one of the larger problems we are facing right now - email overload.
But for this to be effective, email has to be personalised also. Yahoo mail is inferior to gmail in that the experience feels a lot more like you are visiting a yahoo site, and not visiting your email box. That needs to change.
Yahoo has had too much going on...as opposed to Google which is all about simple tech and innovation.
When Google launches something new it is of a tech focus and us tech folks listen and eat it up.
Yahoo focused on so many different businesses that when they launch a new & exciting tech product..the buzz with early adopters (those who have a big role in shaping the market) is not as grand as it is with Google.
For me this sounds cool but its a Yahoo product not Google.
Hopefully it crazy awesome and it starts to change how I feel about Yahoo.
Will they ever fix their current low-quality webmail offering? Yahoo ranks dead last amongst most surveys of useful metrics like email deliverability, uptime, etc.
yahoo should focus on building features into mail that provide real benefit (imaps, better spam detecting, search that actually works) than features no one cares about (reading news in your email screen, more "app" mumbo jumbo)
But for this to be effective, email has to be personalised also. Yahoo mail is inferior to gmail in that the experience feels a lot more like you are visiting a yahoo site, and not visiting your email box. That needs to change.