14 DAY TRIAL // British Telecom has announced that it's ending its partnership with Yahoo and that it will migrate all of its customers, who were given a co-branded Yahoo Mail account, to a new BT email system.
The two companies have been working together for a decade now.
The end of the deal also means that BT customers won't get the Yahoo homepage as default anymore. In one move, Yahoo lost six million accounts and quite a lot of traffic.
"BT.com is getting a big makeover to make it more informative, engaging and useful for you to visit every day," the company announced.
"We’re also launching a new email service – BT Mail – and an easier way for you to log in to our online services – the BT ID. As part of these changes, we’re also closing the current BT Yahoo! website and email service, BT Yahoo! Mail," it added.
While the new sites will be live next month, the migration to the new email system will take several months, but BT hopes to have it done by the end of the year.
Yahoo Mail users will be able to keep their addresses, which aren't linked to a yahoo.com domain, but their email will arrive in the new BT Mail.
There is talk that the switch has something to do with a string of hacks BT Mail customers have been reporting. BT didn't say anything about this specifically now, but it did complain about hacks earlier this year.
Despite a joint investigation by the two companies, plenty of BT customers are still complaining. However, these "hacks" are, in many cases, just too much spam in the inboxes. Most of the time, they the fault of the users themselves. And the move seems to be motivated more by business than genuine concern with users' security.