75% Of Yahoos Won't Eat Their Own Dog Food By Using Yahoo Mail

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It's one of those things that companies really rather like you to do: use the products of the company you're working for. But there seems to be a considerable amount of consumer resistance within Yahoo to the inhouse use of Yahoo Mail. Something of a problem really, for it is indeed difficult to persuade those outside the company to use something that those inside it scorn.

All Things D has the memo:

Hello Yahoos,



That sounds like one good reason not to work for Yahoo. Imagine being forced to use Bing!

This isn't just one of those tech things either. You'll get some very odd looks if you go to work at Ford and start turning up every day in a Chevy. A colleague does some consulting work for Skoda and he is regularly taken aside and given a little chat about his habit of turning up in a Ford. If you work at McDonald's you will indeed be expected to eat at least the occasional Big Mac with at least a semblance of delight, faked or otherwise. And you'll not get far at Coke if your lunchbox regularly contains Pepsi.

So it is with things like email and search. There's a reasonable expectation that you will indeed eat the dog food, that is, use the company you work for's products. And that there's significant consumer resistance to doing this doesn't reflect well upon those products, that dog food.

There is some fun in the memo though. This is amusing about Outlook:


Then again, there's an admission that the new Yahoo Mail isn't quite entirely and wholly ready for prime time yet:


On the plus side at least they are actually trying to get their own staff to use, and thereby test and improve, their software offering. In contrast to a certain health care insurance system that perhaps we shouldn't all be giggling about. On the negative side, well, if 75% of Yahoos don't want to use Yahoo Mail that's not a very encouraging signal to the rest of us that we ought to be using it, is it?
