She may be getting cheered on Wall Street, but Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is getting a thumbs down from users of the company’s email and chat forums.
Thousands of users have complained to Yahoo about its latest redesign that eliminated some popular features while adding others they find clunky and confusing.
“We have refreshed your inbox with more room for messages and added exciting new features you will love,” the Internet giant told users when it relaunched Yahoo Mail last week.
But rather than applaud the overhaul, users have flooded the company’s “feature suggestions” page to demand changes be rolled back and old features restored.
“I HATE IT! Please bring back the old version of yahoo classic,” wrote one aggrieved user on the site.
One of the biggest complaints has been Yahoo’s removal of the email’s “tabs” feature, which allowed users to open multiple emails at once.
A post headlined “Please Bring Back Tabs” has floated to the top of the suggestions page after attracting a whopping 47,302 votes and 3,608 comments as of Thursday afternoon.
The author of the post said that tabs is one of the reasons he uses Yahoo Mail over Gmail, echoing complaints on the site that the new interface mimics Google’s system. Mayer was a top executive at Google before she took the CEO job at Yahoo last summer.
“If I wanted to use Gmail, I would do that,” one user griped on the suggestions site. “You didn’t study the customer usability before changing your system, did you?”
Yahoo didn’t immediately return a request for comment, but a recent post on the suggestions site by the site’s administrator suggests that the company is at least aware of the complaints.
“The recent design changes in Yahoo Mail are important steps to building a more modern and personalized version. We recognize that this is a lot of change and are actively listening to user feedback so we can continuously make improvements,” said the post from the administrator.
