Yahoo! is testing Public Mail beta

Read-Write Web talks about it here

Today Yahoo is releasing the new Ajax-powered version of Yahoo Mail to all users in the US and across 18 international markets. Previously Yahoo Mail Beta (as it is known) was only available to a relatively small group of people.

Yahoo! Mail is the No. 1 Web mail service in the world – it has 255 million users according to comScore’s July 2006 figures. By comparision, MSN Hotmail has 234 million, AOL Mail 56 million and Google’s Gmail 49 million

this release of Ajax functionality in Y! Mail Beta to 255M-odd users represents the largest scale use of Ajax in the world – together with the release earlier this year of Yahoo’s re-designed homepage.

The new Yahoo Mail Beta is touted as being as functional as a desktop email client (such as Outlook). Other new features include an integrated calendar timeline (including mashups with Yahoo Maps), drag and drop e-mail organization, message preview, tabs for messages, plus an integrated RSS reader. There are also plenty of links to other Yahoo properties, such as this one just above the inbox: “Start your own blog here” (which leads to Yahoo360).