Email forwarding throwdown — Google v Yahoo: Two email addresses enter, one leaves

Last week I was reading the Wall Street Journal and came upon its "Quick Fix" feature, by Lyneka Little.

It follows.

Redirecting an Email

The Problem: Heading out of the office on vacation but waiting for the response to an important email.

The Solution: Have the reply sent to an alternate email address.

Outlook, the email program used in many offices, allows users to send replies to a message to another email address that can be accessed through a mobile device or via any computer.

This option will reroute all responses to a particular message sent from Outlook. To set up the feature, start by creating a new message, click on view, scroll down and click on options, check the box marked "have replies sent to" and add the email address where you would like the reply sent. Then, follow the usual steps of creating and sending a new message.

Other email programs also offer the option of redirecting replies. On Gmail, for example, you can also specify which emails should be automatically sent elsewhere by using the "create a filter" option.

The Caveat: If the email is sent to your mobile device as a text message, you may be unable to reply.

.....................

The results of my efforts follow.

I was able, with not too much difficulty, to get into the Gmail options pages and successfully forward my Gmail address.

Bonus: Google offered the option of also receiving the email in my Gmail Inbox, which I accepted.

I mean, belt + suspenders when it comes to techie stuff.

Then, feeling really full of myself, I decided to see if I could forward my Yahoo mail.

Not anytime soon.

Turns out that I couldn't for the life of me find an option to do that in my Yahoo mail settings.

When I searched Google for help, I got this Yahoo mail help page.

Below, the relevant portion.

I clicked on "Why am I unable to forward my Yahoo! Mail?"

That took me here.

Below, the relevant portion.

But when I went to my Yahoo mail account and clicked "'Mail Options' in the upper right-hand area of the page," the page that opened up did not — repeat, not — have a "POP Access & Forwarding" link under the "Management" column.

Huh?

Thwarted.

Make the user feel stupid and incompetent: the first rule of poor web design and interface.

Yahoo has mastered it, without a doubt.

But I kept gnawing away and finally discovered an article from back in 2002 on ZDNet that described Yahoo's decision to no longer offer free email forwarding.

From that point on they would charge $29.99 a year for this privilege, free as you might have noticed on Google.

Huh.

I decided to proceed.

After a few more blind alleys I managed to find a page where I could sign up for Yahoo mail plus for $19.99 a year.

It includes email forwarding.

I paid the price and now have Yahoo mail plus and lo and behold my Yahoo mail now goes right into my Mac Mailbox.

But it's still not as good as Google's service, not just because it costs but also because Yahoo mail plus does not offer the option to have a copy of the mail stay in your Yahoo mail box — forwarding means that's the only copy that will exist.

Pretty revelatory, all in all.

Yahoo's got so far to go to become user-friendly I really do wonder if they'll ever catch up to the masters.