Yahoo Inc. has acquired an e-mail startup company it hopes will help it move closer to rolling out further changes to its popular e-mail service, according to wire service reports.
Terms were not disclosed.
“Oddpost.com will continue to operate with no interruption in service,” the San Francisco company said in a statement. “However, from this day forward, we’ll be working on a new, advanced Yahoo Mail product.”
Oddpost’s $30-a-year e-mail service focuses on an e-mail interface with functionality that is similar to that of desktop applications such as Microsoft Outlook, such as the ability to drop and drag messages.
Competition among Web-based e-mail providers has intensified since Google Inc. entered this market in April. Google unveiled an invite-only public beta test of its Gmail service. Gmail provides 1 gigabyte of free storage and an interface that organizes e-mails through search and category tags rather than folders.
In a separate development, Google Inc.–which has filed for a $2.7 billion initial public offering–has applied to list its shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The firm did not indicate which trading symbol it intends to use.
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