Hooray!

Just hearing that name, RocketMail, brings a tear to my eyes.

It was one of the first email accounts I signed up for, you see. I don’t clearly remember the other ones: Did I have an account on a usa.net email address? RocketMail, for sure. Not that I used it much. Those were the days when not too many people had email accounts, and most likely, I used the RocketMail account I had t sign up for newsletters and registrations.

But now It’s back from the dead. After all the nastiness about Yahoo! recently, they have done something who has gone and warmed the cockles (Just what are cockles?!) of my heart. Yahoo! has resurrected RocketMail. And along with that, they have given you all another domain name too to collect your email from in YMail.

Yahoo purchased RocketMail in 1997 - and then got rid of the RocketMail name. It just became Yahoo! Mail thenceforth.

Why is Yahoo resurrecting the RocketMail domain name and email service, though? Well, what you will get is still Yahoo! Mail - with the all-new Yahoo mail interface and Ajaxy goodness. But you also get to choose those email usernames which you can no longer get in Yahoo! mail. It has too many users, and most people can’t get an email address of their liking in Yahoo! (or even Hotmail) anymore.

The massive email user numbers is critical to Yahoo! and the new Rocketmail email accounts will help them keep more of their users with them as well as bring in new sign-ups.

Considering the events unfolding at Yahoo! in the last one month, I would nto be surprised if this resurrection of Rocketmail is of no consequence to Yahoo in their larger mess-up that is going on these days. But well, if it makes some people happy and keeps a few more customers closeby, why not!