Yahoo

Yahoo Mail is really annoying me … well, more than usual. They continue to send me messages about how I should upgrade from my “classic” account to the “new and improved(!)” Yahoo Mail, which is not only extremely ugly but also runs horribly on my computer. Forget that.

Onto Annoyance #2: Half the time I log into my mail account, the little sponsored advertisement on the side is for a U.S. Green Card! Since when did for-profit companies start selling green cards?! It’s interesting that Yahoo assumes that just because I am in another country, I must not be a U.S. citizen and therefore I must want to come to the U.S. I hate to burst your bubble, Yahoo, but U.S. citizens live all over the world and not all non-U.S. citizens necessarily want to come to the U.S.

It surprises me to see advertising in such poor taste coming from a company that has translated its web services into (at least) 36 different languages. There’s Yahoo Germany, Yahoo Russia, Yahoo Brazil—even Québec has its own Yahoo homepage!—yet I haven’t received a single ad about purchasing visas for any of these countries, let alone purchasing anything from any country besides the U.S.

I think it’s time for a friendly consumer letter to the oh-so-globally-aware advertising department at Yahoo. Are they really paying attention to what messages their advertisers are conveying? Do they care?