Back in October, Yahoo updated its mail client on the Google Play Store with support for rival third-party webmail services like Microsoft’s Outlook.com, Hotmail, and AOL Mail. While the company didn’t integrate Gmail support into its app back then, it is finally doing so now. According to a post on the company’s official blog on Tumbler, Yahoo is finally integrating support for the world’s most widely-used webmail service – Gmail – with the latest update that’s being rolled out to its mail app on both the Google Play Store as well as on Apple’s App Store. The company says that it has expanded its server-side IMAP support to bring the feature to users of its mail app, thereby allowing users with Gmail accounts to further consolidate their emails under a single third-party client.
Yahoo says the feature is available globally with immediate effect for not just the Android and iOS mobile apps but also on its website, meaning the feature will be available on desktop browsers as well. Those who want to connect their Gmail account with Yahoo Mail, should go into their Account Settings in the Yahoo Mail mobile app or on the website and choose the applicable option(s). The beleaguered tech company will be hoping that it will be able to attract more users to its email service by rolling out multiple mailbox support for Gmail, thereby giving it a chance to showcase its search capabilities from within its mail service. Whether or not that will convert Google Search users to Yahoo remains to be seen, but this is definitely the first step towards that target for the Sunnyvale, California-based tech company.
While the latest update simply includes Gmail support, the previous major update, rolled out back in early October, came with new design elements, giving an insight into the company’s new design philosophy, including a full material design makeover for the Android app. That particular update also included a number of new functional enhancements and tweaks, including new contact forms with more nuanced information, a more secure inbox to weed out spam and potentially malicious emails, search filters for in-mail searches, an undo button for send emails, the “Yahoo Account Key” feature, which promises to relieve users from the annoyance of using passwords every time, along with the ability to access and sync multiple email accounts across different mailboxes and services through the Yahoo Mail app.