I'll have more to say about some of the larger issues around this in a few days, but now that the embargo has been lifted (damn you, Om Malik), I wanted to point at the pair of announcements from Yahoo! Mail today and yesterday.

The Bottomless Inbox

Yesterday came word of "unlimited" storage for all mailboxes on Yahoo mail. What can I say, storage is getting cheaper all the time.

SOAP and JSON-RPC APIs

Today's news is that the Yahoo! Mail API that we previewed at last year's Open Hack Day is now available to all developers. It speaks both SOAP and JSON-RPC and is well documented. The SOAP API is the same API that the mail front-end uses to talk to the mail back-end mail system, so it's the real deal. There's sample code too. And even apps it the gallery.

Screencasts!

In the last few weeks, Matt McAlister and I sat down to talk with a few folks using our "screencast interview" style. So I present two videos for you Quicktime viewing pleasure:

We'll have lower fidelity versions up on Yahoo! Tube Yahoo! Video before too long.

Make Money Fast

Oh, I should also mention that if you build the next killer application and convince people to use it and upgrade to the premium version of Yahoo! Mail, we'll pay you $10 per user. The sky's the limit on how cool your mail front-end can be. We'll handle the infrastructure.

This stuff has been in the works for quite a while and a whole team of people has been putting tons of work into make sure it all works right--especially Ryan Kennedy.

See Also

Posted by jzawodn at March 28, 2007 05:02 PM

Reader Comments
# Alek said:

Killer app for the SOAP API - an IMAP proxy.

on March 28, 2007 06:15 PM
# said:

So why can't we use this for unlimited data storage? If you've gone this far, you may as well have also created an S3 competitor. Storage is cheap, right?

on March 28, 2007 06:39 PM
# Larry Ludwig said:

Now if only Yahoo get their act together and prevent spammers from using their webmail for sending spam in MASS. As a mid sized ISP I see at least 50 a day reported.

on March 28, 2007 06:44 PM
# Jeff Barr said:

Very interesting developer incentive/payment program there - I like it! Congratulations on the release.

on March 28, 2007 10:00 PM
# Ryan Kennedy said:

Thanks Jeremy! It was awesome doing the screencast with you, Matt and Dan. You do a great job leading the conversation so I never feel unsure of what to talk about. ;)

Ryan Kennedy
Yahoo! Mail Web Service Engineer

on March 28, 2007 10:21 PM
# Jason Barnes said:

I think Om's opening statement said it best: 'What took them so long?' Definitely a big step for Yahoo!, and I agree with Jeff Barr, very interesting incentive program! :)

on March 29, 2007 03:17 PM
# Edwin Khodabakchian said:

Kudos! Do you know if there are plans at Y! to expose the RSS server API? Thanks. -Edwin

on March 29, 2007 11:28 PM
# Greg Whitescarver said:

There is one VERY IMPORTANT problem keeping me from endorsing Yahoo! Mail, even though I've been a dedicated user for years now, and I would love a stack of $10 bills. I've emailed support, but this problem is so critical that I'm putting my morals aside and mentioning it on your blog: attachments to new messages won't download correctly (in Y! Mail Beta), sometimes for many hours after I've received a message. Forwarding the messages to GMail immediately solves the problem. You're a powerful man; talk to someone, please!

on April 2, 2007 07:33 AM
# Ryan Kennedy said:

Greg, shoot me email and we'll see if we can troubleshoot. This is the first I've ever heard of this problem.

Ryan Kennedy (rckenned AT yahoo-inc.com)
Yahoo! Mail

on April 2, 2007 02:09 PM
# bazz said:

I could not find a similar post, but everthing is related, last words of Plato. I have Win2K O/S and dialup, but recetnly Yahoo has been very slow in launching and Google' search results when clicked is the same problem.Like 2-3 mins, and Modem runs at 50.6 Bps. Is this a network load problem or my system?

on April 8, 2007 01:47 PM
# Alan Liew said:

Yahoo! Mail API has affiliate program to pay developers for referring new users. Interesting topic, going to post this opportunities on my blog.

on April 12, 2007 11:59 PM
# Suresh Neelagaru said:

Hi Jeremy

do you know of anyone that has written a program that uses yahoo mail, but can strip out all attachments and store the sttachments separately? What I mean is, have separate folders that used for storing documents a folder for pdf's, a folder for .doc, one for other types, etc, and a search function that lets you search the contents of those filez as well?

thanks

Dr. Neelagaru

on April 21, 2007 05:47 PM
# Ryan Kennedy said:

Suresh, you can do this pretty easily with the web service if you want. It's an odd feature request, though. The built-in search indexing will do all of this for you even without sorting attachments into different folders. There are search shortcuts that allow you to restrict results to messages that only have attachments of a certain type. Additionally, the search indexer looks inside of textual attachments, so searches will find instances of the query either in the message text or in the attachment.

Ryan Kennedy
Yahoo! Mail Web Service

on April 22, 2007 05:11 PM
# Adrian said:

Wohoooo (love the word unlimited)

on June 17, 2007 08:14 PM
# zoe delay said:

we have in germany web.de wit unlimited storage since a few years. Only 5 € a month.

on November 12, 2007 07:46 AM
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