Can Yahoo! (YHOO) Mail help the company come back?

Some long-awaited changes to Yahoo!, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: YHOO) most-used product, Yahoo! Mail, are now available. The company has had its flagship product in "Beta" for almost a year now, and the company is publicly rolling out a few new enhancements to the world's most popular web-based email service this week. But, will those changes help the company regain some former luster?

My guess is that a majority of Yahoo! Mail users will keep their accounts active since notifying hundreds (or thousands) of contacts of an email address changes is a huge pain. I used Yahoo! Mail for more than seven years, but changed to Google, Inc's (NASDAQ: GOOG) Gmail service back in 2005. After using Google's product, I was won over. For me, it's light years ahead of Yahoo!'s offering just based on threaded email conversations alone. Your mileage may vary, of course. But, Yahoo! must be doing something right, as it enjoys a huge lead over Google in this space (it has been around quite a bit longer, though).

Will the ads Yahoo! continues to display drive its customers away? It sure hasn't yet, and the company admits that Yahoo! Mail is central to growing its ad revenue. It's no surprise -- Yahoo!'s free email is stuffed with ads. It's another reason I abandoned it since when you're using email for work purposes, ads affect productivity, big time. Yahoo! Mail improvements include an enhancement in performance and speed along with a more refined version of the message search feature.

Add that to the capability to chat with Yahoo! Messenger users from right within Yahoo! Mail and text messaging directly from within Yahoo! Mail (wireless carrier email address not needed) makes for some neat additions. Are they enough to steal customers from Microsoft Inc.'s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Live Hotmail or Google's Gmail? At this time, I doubt it. It just needs to keep current customers happy.POP access, e-mail forwarding and no graphical ads.