Later today, Yahoo will launch two new email address domains: ymail.com and rocketmail.com to its webmail service. This is due to the increasing difficulty that web users face in trying to find simple and straightforward usernames while registering for an email service ‘@yahoo.com’. Millions of new addresses will now be available to users, with the introduction of ‘@ymail.com’ and ‘@rocketmail.com’.

Current Yahoo.com users who find better addresses at these newer domains will have the option of exporting their messages and contacts to their new accounts. All the features and services that were offered for Yahoo.com will be available for Ymail.com and Rocketmail.com, including the country-specific extensions to the email address.

Launched in 1997, Yahoo Mail has within a span of just 11 years, grown its user base at Yahoo.com to over 266 million unique users to become the largest and most popular email portal, beating Microsoft’s Hotmail which comes a close second at 264 million users, and Google’s Gmail with 102 million users.

Of late however, apart from the difficulty in finding an appropriate username at yahoo.com, another cause for concern is that Gmail has, since its launch, been growing at a fast rate, overtaking both Yahoo and Hotmail. It is estimated that in the past year alone, 30 million users have registered for a Gmail account. Yahoo will be hoping that the launch of these two domains will curtail the rising popularity of Gmail.

It would be interesting to see whether the launch of these 2 new domains will now give Ymail the upper hand over Gmail, and if so, for how long it can be sustained.

Share your opinion on this news item.