Tech Shout!

On Thursday, a Yahoo executive revealed that Yahoo Inc. will be incorporating its instant messaging into its email program. Yahoo is surely making it easier to choose between e-mail and instant messaging tools by merging the two together in its very popular and free Yahoo! Mail program.

According to Brad Garlinghouse, Vice President of Communications, Communities and Front doors at Yahoo, said that the proposed product will seamlessly integrate mail and instant messaging. At the Web 2.0 summit, Garlinghouse said that this step is meant to improve the overall user experience, which according to him is lacking in several Web 2.0 services.

There will be no need to download Yahoo Messenger software, which can be confusing for users who are not very technically inclined.

Brad Garlinghouse demonstrated the new product, which showed that when a user opens his/her mail, an icon appears showing whether he or she is online. Users will also be able to see if their contacts are logged onto Yahoo Mail and can easily chat with them.

The new product which uses AJAX technology will also allow users to see the online status of contacts, who continue to use Yahoo Messenger separately and can also chat with them. In time, users will soon be able to chat with Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger users too.

Yahoo Inc. is considering whether the phone facilities that are available on Yahoo Messenger, should be incorporated into this new system.

Google, who is Yahoo’s rival, has already accomplished this with its Google Talk instant message chat service that is available in its Gmail e-mail program. However, according to rough estimates, Yahoo’s e-mail users are almost 10 times larger than Google’s.

It should also be noted that the two other major e-mail service providers, Microsoft and AOL, do not have this integrated messaging facility in their e-mail clients.

The new product which merges Yahoo Messenger into Yahoo Mail is expected to debut early next year.