Clinging To Relevance, Yahoo Prevents Ad Block Users From Checking Yahoo Mail
from the ingenious-strategy dept
Yahoo’s been struggling for some time under the leadership of Marissa Mayer to become as relevant in the advertising and content space as contemporaries like Google and Facebook. By and large these efforts have not been going particularly well, with the mood inside the company supposedly “grim and contentious,” employees frustrated with a lack of direction, heavy often-senseless micromanagement, and a “lack of a coherent strategy.” A growing movement from both inside and outside of Yahoo to replace Mayer has gained momentum.
So as the company struggles for relevance this week in the face of users, employees and investors, somebody at the company apparently thought it would be a great idea to annoy a huge swath of the company’s userbase. According to a growing number of Ad Block users, Yahooers this week were met with a message scolding them for using ad blocking technology and preventing them from accessing their mail through the website:
“At Yahoo, we are continually developing and testing new product experiences. This is a test we’re running for a small number of Yahoo Mail users in the U.S.”
Really? You’re barely clinging to relevance and you think it’s a great idea to begin alienating the remaining customers that haven’t fled to gmail? As we’ve noted many, many times, there are numerous answers to dealing with ad blocking, from designing less annoying ads, to developing new business models, to giving users more control. Instead, some websites have tried to dictate to consumers what they should do with their own browsers, and in some instances punished site visitors for even talking about ad blocking whatsoever. In Yahoo’s case, the decision had the expected result. It started to drive users away:
"please disable ad blocker to continue using yahoo mail"
how about no. do you want me to stop using yahoo mail?? cause this is a good start
— Timmay (@RunLikeDeer) November 19, 2015
So @YahooMail has blocked my inbox for using an ad blocker. It was a good run, I guess. Goodbye! Hello Apple Mail, as much as I hate it.
— Andrei Herasimchuk (@Trenti) November 19, 2015
Filed Under: ad block, ad blocking, email, yahoo mail
Companies: yahoo
Comments on “Clinging To Relevance, Yahoo Prevents Ad Block Users From Checking Yahoo Mail”
Webmail, not even once.
Re: Re:
Webmail can be fine if you host it yourself, using rainloop or roundcube.
Re: Re:
I use AdBlock Plus w Firefox and do not have a single problem with my Yahoo webmail, so I don’t know what these other folks are talking about.
Yahoo has it BACKWARDS
Yahoo says:
What they mean is
If that is not what they mean, then they will discover that this is what will happen.
Yahoo is not barely clinging to relevance
Yahoo lost relevance a long time ago.
Is Yahoo ever going to be put out of it’s misery? Ever?
Re: Re:
Is Yahoo ever going to be put out of my misery? Ever?
Re: Re: Re:
Perhaps after aol stops being the goto mail provider.
Niche audience
Look, Yahoo used to be one of THE companies on the internet. They were huge. They got supplanted. What are they going to do? Once facebook started taking users from myspace, did myspace ever bounce back? Did dig? Ask Jeeves? Hotmail? Once a huge player in the internet gets supplanted there is just about 0 precedence for them to make a comeback.
So what to do? Yahoo isn’t going to regain the number of users they lost. It’s just not in the cards. And I’m sure the stock holders don’t want to just give up and liquidate the company.
The only way for them to cling to what relevance they have is to do what this site CONSTANTLY suggest companies do (even in this very article), try a new business model! Yahoo, while possibly alienating some of their “mainstream” user base, is trying something NEW by going after a niche target audience. I’m sure all the S&M fans out there who just LOVE being treated like trash will be flocking to the new-and-improved, advertising mandatory, yahoo.com
Re: Niche audience
“Look, Yahoo used to be one of THE companies on the internet. They were huge. They got supplanted.”
That happened a loooong time ago. If this is how long they took to work out they needed to change their way of doing business, they deserve what they get.
“what this site CONSTANTLY suggest companies do (even in this very article), try a new business model!”
There’s no evidence of a new business model, only evidence that they’re trying to force people to see the ads that support their old business model.
Re: Re: Niche audience
woosh? I really thought that last sentence was enough to show i was trying to be silly….
Re: Re: Re: Niche audience
You’d think so, but have you read the “serious” comments that get written here along the lines of your first few points? It’s always best to address those regardless.
Aim at foot...FIRE!
I stopped seeing Yahoo ads a long time ago, ever since I stopped using Yahoo for anything but email. I have a couple of email accounts with them and use the ‘basic HTML mail for slow connections’…no ads. Now if I find that if because I have an ad blocker installed for other reasons I cannot see my inbox there, I will do the work necessary to notify those few people it matters to that they should use a new address.
The reason I have stayed with them this long is that my address is my real name with no stupid numbers following or other idiocy. That is how long I have had that account, and why I value it. On the other hand I don’t use it much and have other accounts with other providers for normal usage, and I don’t get several hundred spam emails weekly on those. Those addresses have nothing to do with my real name (live and learn).
AT&T, Bellsouth, etc. email hosted at Yahoo
Several years ago AT&T sent all their email account hosting to Yahoo. It’s been a pain in the asp ever since.
Auto-forwarding drops messages (many don’t get forwarded on the intended destination), spam-filters can’t be turned off (many false positives), several times the POP3/SMTP servers with expired security certificates.
Damn you AT&T for foisting your users off onto Yahoo!
I took Cory Doctorow’s suggestion and started using POP3 and IMAP to receive and send from my Yahoo accounts.
Skills required to be a CEO
I stopped using Yahoo because its interface became too busy. Too much stuff on the page. Too much bling.
Mayer made her name based on the simple design of Google. Has Yahoo been simplified? Exactly what has Mayer brought to Yahoo, except to annoy the employees with new policies? She certainly hasn’t brought a new design to Yahoo. Was she really responsible for Google’s simple design? Perhaps all she did was prevent Google from making its primary web page like Yahoo’s, rather than impose a new design.
This is more support for the notion that to get to the highest corporate levels, skill is not required. What is more important is knowing the right people and happening to be in the right place at the right time.
Re: Skills required to be a CEO
“I stopped using Yahoo because its interface became too busy. Too much stuff on the page. Too much bling”
I switched about a year or two before that, when Google first came out, offering the world’s first no-ad-banner search engine (a VERY big deal in the dialup era).
“This is more support for the notion that to get to the highest corporate levels, skill is not required. What is more important is knowing the right people and happening to be in the right place at the right time.”
It’s no secret that the higher up the corporate ladder (and the bigger the company) the more political skills and salesmanship matter. The part that is amazing is how often the people at the top are so detached from the rest of us. The “successful” ones live in their own bubble, surrounded by yes-men, feeling they’re superior to everyone else.
Re: Skills required to be a CEO
I always thought it had to do with performing natural and unnatural sex acts (using your MBA degree) on members of the board of directors. There are only a few exceptions that I am aware of.
Re: Skills required to be a CEO
Was she really responsible for Google’s simple design?
Of course not.
Re: Skills required to be a CEO
You forgot number 1. You have to be a sociopath.
Adblock is a necessity to browsing the internet in this day and age and these sites have only themselves to blame for it.
Browsing the internet without adblock is like having sex with a hooker without a condom.
Re: Re:
I agree and expect that we’ll see “stealthy” ad-blockers as a result. I imagine it would be pretty easy to download the ads, then draw white boxes on top right before displaying anything.
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That won’t protect you from malvertising. I once again submit the hooker analogy.
Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Nov 23rd, 2015 @ 2:48pm
Yeah, either way you’re probably gonna catch a nasty virus.
And then there’s mobile where your bandwidth is often very limited so not having an adblocker is essentially paying to to see ads
Re: Re:
Winning!
Yahoo’s popularity is because they were there first, not because they were good. Their attitude of treating themselves like an indispensable services rather than an oit of touch relic of annoyance is why they’re failing.
This may as well be a message to Yahoo’s remaining users that the site is shutting down and to seek other services.
What are these ads you speak of?
Having several accounts to keep track of, I still use an email client to manage all of them. No ads, (mostly) better spam management, and offline access. My internet connection goes down at least once a month, so having access to past messages has saved my ass more than once.
Besides, logging into each account individually through a webmail site must be a gateway to one of the outer circles of hell.
Re: What are these ads you speak of?
That pretty much sums up why I continue to use a local email client. I have several email accounts on various services, as well as on my own, hosting provider serviced, email server.
Everyone I know that relies on Browser based email access, sooner or later, has problems with receiving important emails.
Re: Probably the warning on the right side?
Hey, here’s a silly idea: Why not make more valuable email by cutting the spam?
Anyway, as regards your question, I’m pretty sure it relates to some warnings I’ve been getting about an ad blocker. They pop up in the right side in an area that is probably supposed to get a Flash garbage of some kind.
Only problem is that I’m NOT using any ad blocker that I know of. Evidently something about my security settings is triggering a false alarm. Can’t say I care a hill of beans, even though I still check my Yahoo email and it would cause me a tiny bit of inconvenience of Yahoo disappeared tomorrow…
Anyway, I want to focus on the positive side, something that Yahoo (or any of the large email providers) could do for better email: Give us tools to put the spammers out of business. Obviously not possible to eliminate all spam and all insane sociopathic spammers, but we could hurt them in their most sensitive and intelligent organ, their wallets. I really want tools to help disrupt ALL of the spammers’ infrastructure, pursue ALL of the spammers’ accomplices, and even help and protect ALL of the spammers’ victims. Insofar as many of those victims are corporations like Yahoo itself, it’s kind of hard for me to understand “Live and let spam” as a viable business model.
Anyway, ’nuff said, but details available upon polite request.
Re: Re: Probably the warning on the right side?
This may not be compatible with the Yahoo business model. They provide two vital services to spammers:
So long as these are important parts of their business, I cannot foresee them making any effort to disrupt these things. I have not yet heard any suggestion that they intend to leave the spam and scam support business.
Yahoo Answers:
How to put the last nail in your own coffin while you’re on the inside.
It’s amazing how, with each passing year, Yahoo keeps going deeper and deeper down the toilet. Rocketmail was once a great service, until being bought out by Yahoo and destroyed bit by bit. Perhaps it will soon follow Yahoo’s other purchased-then-abused companies, like Geocities. (and Yahoo also had one of the web’s very first “cloud” services, Briefcase — also shut down).
This latest “testing the waters” move should not surprise anyone, as they’re counting on few people going to the trouble of changing their email address over a single annoyance. Yahoo long ago reached the stage of accumulating all the customers it will ever get. Once that point was reached, Yahoo’s core business strategy has been trying to squeeze as much revenue as possible out of each user, rather than growing the company by offering things that attract new people.
Yahoo! stopped being relevant for me quite some years ago.
Was never a fan of Yahoo This will do nothing to encourage me to use their services. It is my standard operating procedure to drop any site that requires you to remove adblockers to use their service. They value their service far more than is necessary. I happen to value security and lack of malware more.
So Yahoo! can keep it’s email for those dumb enough to turn it off. It just confirms that Yahoo! isn’t for me.
Strangely enough, I never see ad’s when reading yahoo mail, but I use an IMAP client, not their lousy web interface.
A Charitable Interpretation
“At Yahoo, we are continually developing and testing new product experiences. This is a test we’re running for a small number of Yahoo Mail users in the U.S.”
Translation: “Management won’t shut up about this, so we implemented a small-scale test just so we’d have irrefutable proof of what a stupid idea it is.”
But if Yahoo! shuts down...
what e-mail will I use for all my spam subscriptions?
OT
I am about having an aneurysm here over how many other people still use mail clients. I run into this in very few other places. (And, quite frankly, cannot get anyone to switch to one, no matter how much they complain about their webmail – functionality, interface, the constantly changing UI on some of them, ads, etc. Although most of them who have been around long enough remember liking Outlook Express for some reason…)
Re: OT
“Although most of them who have been around long enough remember liking Outlook Express for some reason…)”
And then there were those who never even bothered to try out Outlook Express because Pine or Elm seemed good enough.
Re: OT
I will always use mail clients. I’ve yet to see a webmail service that even comes close to being as good.
Re: Re: OT
Absolutely. I can do things with mutt that webmail clients can’t even begin to dream about. It’s small, it’s fast, it’s damn near immune to attacks, and it is easily learned by anyone willing to put down their mouse for a few hours and (gasp!) READ A MANUAL PAGE.
I find it hilarious that Yahoo is taking action against Adblock since Adblock has become impotent. Adblock does not block 99% of the advertisements out there. Adblock has lost a massive swathe of users ever since they allowed companies and entities to ‘pay a service fee’ in order to be unblockable.
I no longer use it and instead use Adguard which does what Adblock is supposed to do.
Re: Re:
I use adblock plus on Firefox and it does block about 99% of the ads. For awhile, it had problems with some streaming sites so I had to turn it off for troubleshooting. I forgot to turn it back on and tried to do a little browsing. There were so many damn ads my eyes were having spasms! However, the same pages were clean after I turned adblock back on and refreshed them. It still does occasionally let a video or text ad through.
Re: Re: Re:
ABP sold out to advertisers awhile ago. All the cool kids are now using uBlock Origin. I use Pale Moon and its fork Adblock Latitude. The “Plus” in the name is a pointless modifier, as there’s no “upgrade” or degree of blocking specific to one “version” or another.
uBlock Origin works better. You can’t go wrong with a good Hosts file either.
Re: Re:
I suspect that they are using “adblock” in the generic sense, not as a reference to a particular product.
Evil did win.
Marissa Mayer’s most famed accomplishment purportedly was the “Don’t be evil” slogan of Google. Since she left, Google silently dropped the slogan. It would appear that so did Marissa Mayer.
Are they preparing for a career in politics?
Re: Evil did win.
But of course, if she does get ousted due to a no-confidence vote, she’ll pull out the Kleenex and cry “sexism” just like Ellen Pao did.
All this “leaning in” by incompetent executives who just happen to be female isn’t doing much for the “movement.” Then again, the Three Stooges who replaced Pao at Reddit have gutted the site even worse than she ever did during the summer purge.
The Disneyfication of Reddit to attract VCs and left-leaning celebrity Q&A clientele is reminiscent of Giuliani’s fascist sweep of Times Square to get (tada!) DISNEY to invest in it and make New York the happiest little corporate-sanitized paradise on earth. This only makes Pao look like even more of an idiot, because she never saw the blindside coming.
But of course, all examples of bad management by quota hires can be chalked up to sexism or racism or cisgenderism or some other inane gripe from the perpetually offended identity-politics cohort. Just like ISIS isn’t Islamic, Mayer and Pao’s incompetence can only be because the Women Haters’ Club in tech wants to ensure that the glass ceiling is made of concrete, right?
I’m a female who quit Reddit after the PC purge and ditched Yahoo years ago, and I think they’re both pathetic.
There’s a fantastic sense of irony within Yahoo.
Many of its employees won’t use the service (which should be a warning they know something we don’t).
Those few who do are now blocked from their own account, as employees, since they use ad-block.
Yahoo has firmly planted itself in quicksand. By rushing to catch up to everyone else, it just sinks further into the hole.
I can view my Yahoo email just fine with ad blockers
Despite the article, I can view my Yahoo Verizon email account just fine with ad blockers installed.
Maybe it’s the fact that I’m using uBlock Origin instead of the typical AdBlock or AdBlock Plus?
Or maybe that it’s technically an @Verizon.net email address that Verizon makes me login at Yahoo.com to access.
Re: I can view my Yahoo email just fine with ad blockers
RTFA: “This is a test we’re running for a small number of Yahoo Mail users in the U.S.”
You’re probably just not part of the trial group, but it will affect you if they don’t heed the negative feedback.
Started using Yahoo mail last century. Been using Adblock, Noscript and other privacy extensions for years. My Yahoo screen is clean. Keep using it because of the large number of accounts that have it as a contact email. Be a real PITA to switch them all to something else.
As of this morning, my Yahoo mail still working fine. Of course, if their check for Adblockers involves a script, the script blocker will eat it before it can do its damage.
The only reason I have a Yahoo owned address is that Yahoo bought Rocketmail to establish their entire email system.
I’ve had my Rocketmail address since 1996, and I’m loathe to relinquish it.
I have Yahoo locked down into “classic” mode, (no widgets or extras, but it works!) no Flash and no Java, and Adblock running on every single site (except Techdirt!)
I’ve seen no change in my stripped Yahoo mail. Of course, it’s barely more than a field of white and some text now.
Re: Re:
Yahoo destroyed Rocketmail just like Microsoft destroyed Hotmail and Google is now destroying YouTube by trying to turn it into a Netflix clone for its lame tweenage video bloggers. It’s gotten to the point where cancer is more palatable than John Green’s hysterical fan club.
I think the moral of this story is that mega-corporations buying up mom & pop businesses end up destroying those properties. By gorging on smaller IP like a food addict at the buffet table, they make themselves so big and overvalued that they don’t have to give a rat’s tail about negative reactions from their customer base.
What I wouldn’t give for the good old days of small and independent developers who acquired dedicated user bases through listservs and user groups like BMUG, and by offering demo disks in the back of Macworld and PC Magazine. But, alas, those were the good old days before the uber-corporatization of everything and the Eternal September. (The Internet one before 2001 — ironically, around the time Yahoo went online.)
Re: Re: Re:
“Google is now destroying YouTube by trying to turn it into a Netflix clone for its lame tweenage video bloggers.”
You must subscribe to very different channels than I do.
“It’s gotten to the point where cancer is more palatable than John Green’s hysterical fan club.”
I actually had to Google that name to find out that he was an author, although it seems I have heard of one of his books (because it was a movie, I’d never heard of the book before that was marketed). Maybe you should stop following teenagers.
“What I wouldn’t give for the good old days of small and independent developers”
They still exist. Why not support them instead of watching videos about teen fiction?
“The Internet one before 2001 — ironically, around the time Yahoo went online.”
Yahoo went online in 1994. Your facts are consistently accurate, at least.
Dont use adblock...use Adnauseam
Instead of blocking…have ever ad clicked on and hidden at the same time. I’m sure if everyone switched, Yahoo would love to have all that false ad revenue. See how long it takes for them to create another version that block you click on all the ads. Damned if you do…damned if you dont.
http://adnauseam.io/
Is this the same Yahoo that was serving up malware in its ads not so long ago?
An adblocker is like a condom.
My Ad-Blockers aren’t going anywhere!!! You can block your site if you want. Be like Yahoo for all I care. I will just stop going to that site. Lots of others around.
I’ll whitelist sites for those places that Limit the Ad’s and other crap to something reasonable. Using Ghostery, I can block specific stuff on each web site. Allow only some of it and not the other garbage.
RE: is an epic fail?
Nope, use mobile version and ads are less annoying.
Ad blockers are for those who sold their souls to a extortion group (as happened with the owners of Adblock Plus)
I am not seeing this on my yahoo inbox and I have uBlock Origins running on Firefox 42. Maybe because I am using the “basic” interface and not the full-blown ajax UI? Anyway, I don’t even use webmail, I access all of my gmail, yahoo mail, and hotmail accounts via pop3 through TBird.
I'll make Yahoo a deal
… I’ll turn off AdBlock if they agree to stop with the annoying, scammy, and virus-laden ads.
First, I don’t want to see flashing Flash ads with auto-playing music while trying to look through my inbox.
Second, I don’t want a mortgage for 1% interest when no legit bank is offering interest rates this low. I also don’t want smilies or toolbars.
And I also don’t want Flash ads that create a buffer overflow and install a virus… which actually happened. I originally used Yahoo Mail on IE and one day while I was checking e-mail, ZoneAlarm starting altering me that something was trying to change the registry. It was either a coincidence that Yahoo Mail was open at the time or the ad infected my computer.
So, the bottom line is that I now use Firefox and AdBlock because I no longer trust Yahoo Mail.
Then combine that with Yahoo putting newsletters that I want into the Spam folder and putting spam into my Inbox.
I use my e-mail at too many sites and it would be a pain to switch to GMail.
Silly Yahoo, Scripts Are For Kids
Looks like my anti-anti-adblock is working just fine. I expect them to counter with anti-anti-anti-adblock and I’ll fire back with anti-anti-anti-anti-adblock.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Whocares
See what happens when there is a woman in charge. Nothing relevant gets done. When will the world learn this?
The story starts all over again, now it's Verizon
Since a few weeks Verizon has a pop-up every time you open your yahoo mail telling you to stop using adblock and then switching you forcebly to a basic mail box with max 20 mails.
It rains complaints, but Verizon doesn’t care. they obviously want to get rid of all yahoomail users world wide.
Re: The story starts all over again, now it's Verizon
Small world coincidence? Or something fishy going on here? I basically stopped using this website a few years ago. I have not received any notifications. Until today.
Has anything changed during those years? Yeah, about two weeks ago I stopped by to see when I had stopped using the website. I read a book that mentioned some stuff from this website and I was curious to see if the references in the book overlapped with the time when I was active here…
Anyway, my comment posted above seems as relevant as ever. Now most active over on WT.Social…
As regards your new comment, it sounds like I’ve been doing the right thing by rejecting the new ToS each month. Also, I copied all of my old Yahoo email into an IPOP email system.