Yahoo bridges email and IM

Yahoo! blended its free email and Instant Messaging (IM) services, thus making it simpler for users to chat online from any computer connected to the Internet.

Google released a similar feature for GMail last year, but it seems like Yahoo is doing it a little bit smoother.

The company said that for the coming months, Yahoo! will activate this feature for users of the new version of Yahoo! Mail, which is in beta phase but available to all users of the service. In a statement, John Kremer, Vice President, Yahoo! Mail, said that they are bringing the fun of instant messaging into the e-mail experience. It is about bringing to the masses choices on how they communicate. They are hopefully bridging the gap between email users and IM users, as there is still a chunk of Yahoo! Mail users who are not using IM.

Meanwhile, the beta version of Yahoo! mail, which is a free service, offers a number of improvements over the current version, including a more agile interface based on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) that works like a desktop application. It also allows users drag and drop messages into folders, provides a pane to preview message content, and offers the ability to have multiple message windows open.