Yahoo Mail kills the password, brings account keys to life

So while Yahoo Mail might have lost out to Gmail over the years, the intuitive and intelligent mail app could end up giving the engineers at Google something to think about.

By Nandagopal Rajan

Yahoo wants to change the way we use email, or at least one important part of it – the password. In what could be a sign of things to come, the new Yahoo Mail app, which has been refreshed for iOS, Android and web today, will replace the password with a Yahoo Account Key which will work in tandem with your mobile. Plus, Yahoo Mail will bring in the ability to add other third-party mail accounts and the ability to search through all of them at the same time.

So while Yahoo Mail might have lost out to Gmail over the years, the intuitive and intelligent intelligent mail app could end up giving the engineers at Google something to think about. From first looks, the most impressive feature is Yahoo Account Key which will send you a push notification every time there is an attempt to log into your account.

The process can continue only if you authorise the same. “Our intention is to never have a user logged out of a Yahoo account again,” said Fernando Delgado, senior director, product management, Yahoo during a select online briefing.

Clearly, yahoo has realised that 70% email users have multiple accounts and that is why the app will now have the ability to filter To and From messages related to a certain sender and with the added ability to see only photos or files. And this works across all the third party accounts the app is now able to aggregate. So if you are searching for mails from a certain person, it will show conversations from across all linked accounts. Yahoo calls this the unified smart search.

Plus there are unified contacts and auto suggest. So if you are mailing someone from an account which does not have his details the app will pick and fill the same from other accounts. It will also fill in others details like phone number linked to the account. Plus, while suggesting names it will also bring up names of people who are usually part of such conversations, a feature now available on Gmail’s web client.
There is also rich compose, which Yahoo says is the best way to add photos on a mobile mail client. So users will get the ability to add multiple online photos in one go, or just add them as attachments.

The app also works for iOS 9’s new 3D touch features, showing quick actions on soft touch. On Android devices, the new features include a material design with “a bit of Yahoo flair”. So conversations will appear as a single, scrollable thread. Plus, users get the ability to add attachments directly from most recent files and even system folders on the SD card.