Spotlight On: Yahoo!

I have to admit, I get some strange looks when I give out my email address. The underscore doesn’t help but it’s the fact that my email provider is Yahoo that raises the most eyebrows. From comments like “who still uses Yahoo?” to simply “ya-whoooo?”, I’ve heard them all.

But you know what? I don’t care.

My Yahoo email address is the only one I’ve ever had and I’m not about to change it now. And why would I when I like the interface and Yahoo gives me a whopping 1TB of storage? That’s the kind of free storage space that users of other email providers can only dream of!

Established in California in 1994, Yahoo began life as a simple online directory until a search engine page was added in 1995. In 1997, Yahoo added its free mail service and by 1998, Yahoo was the most popular starting point for internet users.

Yahoo’s stock price rocketed in January 2000 during the “dot com bubble” and then crashed back down when the bubble burst in 2001. After that, Yahoo struggled to keep up with its competition and never came close to its early success and popularity again. A security breach back in 2014 didn’t help matters, leaving many questioning the security of Yahoo Mail.

That said, I’m far from the only person still using Yahoo. According to recent reports, Yahoo Mail has around 225 million users — more or less the same as it had back in the day. And then there are the specialist Yahoo website services, including Yahoo Finance, News, and Entertainment, which attract a combined one billion visitors every day. Something about the simple interface and stripped down UX makes it hard to imagine switching to even the latest trendy platforms.

So to answer the question, “Who still uses Yahoo?”, quite a lot of people actually – 227.8 active users in 2024!