- Looking to halt ongoing share losses to Gmail (or at least slow them), Yahoo (YHOO) has overhauled its iOS/Android Mail apps. New features include a smarter search engine that makes suggestions based on queries and message content, the ability to fully manage Hotmail, Outlook.com, and AOL.com e-mail accounts, and social media content integration for contact profiles.
- Getting the most attention is Yahoo Account Key, a feature that lets users login without a password by linking their Yahoo account to a mobile device, and approving/denying logins via push notifications sent to the device. Yahoo argues Account Key is more secure than passwords, and eliminates the possibility of a user being unable to logic due to forgetting his/her password.
- comScore estimates Yahoo Mail had 71M U.S. users as of August, down from 96M two years earlier. Over the same time, Gmail's (GOOG, GOOGL) U.S. base, strengthened by the pre-installing of a Gmail app on devices using Google's version of Android, is believed to have grown to 135M from 96M.
- Yahoo is up strongly thanks to Alibaba, which is up 3.9%. Q3 results are due on Oct. 20.