Skip to main content

Yahoo asks employees to stop using Outlook in bewildering internal memo

Yahoo asks employees to stop using Outlook in bewildering internal memo

Share this story

Outlook 2013 stock
Outlook 2013 stock

In a sprawling, bizarre, and downright bewildering internal Yahoo memo that's been leaked to All Things D, two of the company's executives explain to employees why it's finally time for them to abandon Outlook in favor of Yahoo Mail: "Certainly, we can admire the application for its survival, an anachronism of the now-defunct '90s PC era, a pre-web program written at a time when NT Server terrorized the data center landscape with the confidence of a T. rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents who fully bought into the illusion of their son’s utter uniqueness because the big-mouthed, tiny-armed monster infant could mimic the gestures of The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl."

"The confidence of a T. rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents."

Put just a bit more simply, the executives summarize their point, writing: "But whether it’s familiarity, laziness or simple stubbornness dressed in a cloak of Ayn Randian Objectivism, the time has come to move on, commrade [sic]."

The memo says that only 25 percent of Yahoo employees have left Outlook for their own mail service, even though they were all asked to do so earlier this year. While the two executives who wrote the memo — Jeff Bonforte, senior vice president of communications products, and Randy Roumillat, chief information officer — imply that employees will have to switch over soon, they don't strictly state that it's mandated, despite their lengthy letter. They're also encouraging employees to get on board with other Yahoo services such as Search, explaining that they should be using it already on principal. If like the executives suggest, you're reading their memo and thinking, "Hold on a sec, pilgrim," then head over to ATD where you can see it in full and attempt to understand one of the finest examples of interoffice literature ever leaked.