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Yahoo gives its e-mail a facelift (twice as fast) to stop customers drifting off

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

May 24, 2011 | 2 min read

Bringing in more ads is the key so Yahoo customers can look forward to a better service as one of the original giants flexes its muscles .

The 277 million users of Yahoo's free email service will be switched to the new version within a month. Users will then be able to post updates to Facebook and Twitter accounts from Yahoo's email boxes. The new service is twice as fast, says Yahoo, and can cope with attachments of up to 100 megabytes. You can also chat with friends and family logged into Facebook.

Yahoo still has more customers than Gmail, with 277 million email users worldwide last month. But this is down 3 million, or 1 percent, from the same time last year. Meanwhile, Gmail has shot up to to 220 million worldwide users, 43 million more, or 24 percent, in the past year.

Microsoft's Hotmail service is still No 1 with 327 million users - although that figure is down 27 million, or 8 percent, from last year. Most of Gmail's captures are thought to be coming from Hotmail.

Loyal email users often remain logged in when using other online services, giving more openings for Internet ads - the main way Yahoo and Google make money, although Yahoo hasn't been luring as many advertisers as Google for some time. Yahoo chiefs will be hoping the revamp will enable it to reverse that trend.

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