Yahoo sent out a memo to their employees asking them to switch to Yahoo Mail for their corporate email. The memo is so terrible I feel the need to break it down. It begins:

Hello Yahoos,

Ugh.

Earlier this year we asked you to move to Yahoo Mail for your corporate email account. 25% of you made the switch (thank you). But even if we used the most generous of grading curves (say, the one from organic chemistry), we have clearly failed in our goal to move our co-workers to Yahoo Mail.

Why not just make it company policy?

It's time for the remaining 75% to make the switch. Beyond the practical benefits of giving feedback to your colleagues on the Mail team, as a company it's a matter of principle to use the products we make. (BTW, same for Search.)

Same for search? You mean the search that's powered by Bing.

For some reading this email, you are saying, "Jeff, shut up, you had me at hello." hug Jump over to yo/dogfood, click "Corp Mail/Cal/ Messenger" and you are ready to join our brave new world at yo/corpmail or https://mail.yahoo-inc.com.

URLs are unnecessary. Hyperlinks on the other hand…

For others, you might now be running in your head to a well worn path of justified resistance, phoning up the ol' gang, circling the hippocampian wagons of amygdalian resistance. Hold on a sec, pilgrim.

Ugh. What's the problem with a professional company wide email? I can almost garantee your employees won't be switching to Yahoo mail because you wrote a fun memo.

First, it doesn't feel like we are asking you to abandon some glorious place of communications nirvana. At this point in your life, Outlook may be familiar, which we can often confuse with productive or well designed. 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. There was a similar outcry when we moved away from Outlook's suite-mates in the Microsoft Office dreadnaught. 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...go deep in this pun, it is layered].

Important point: If people are clinging to Outlook because your email isn't better, you have a serious problem.

Less important point: Half the words in that last paragraph were unnecessary because you included a ridiculous pun. A pun for crying out loud. How does the author of this email have a job? I'm starting to get the feeling that Yahoo management doesn't take stuff seriously.

Using corp mail from the Y Mail web interface is remarkably feature rich. It supports booking conference rooms, folders, calendar, filters and global address book. Plus, you get built-in Messenger, smart conversation threading, powerful keyboard shortcuts, the new quick actions, attachment preview and our beautiful new rich themes. In the rare case you do need Outlook, like adding a delegate for your calendar, you can still fire up Outlook for 30 seconds.

Sales pitch from management to employees about their own products. Solid. Gold.

But wait there's more. By using corporate Mail, you'll automatically get to dogfood our new features first. I'm especially excited about a new feature premiering in just a few more days: smart auto-suggest, powered by a platform from the still-have-that-new-acquisition-smell Xobni team. We have been testing this feature with select users in and out of the company and the response has been fantastic: "Whoa!", "Amazing", "Already in love with it. Woot!" and, my favorite, "So nicely integrated that it appears as if it's always been there. I already can't imagine it not being there again."

But wait there's more to this infomercial turned corporate memo.

Feeling that little tingle? Take a deep breath, you can do this. We want you on board, sailor!

Twitter bio of a Yahoo employee: Sailor, pilgrim, Yahoo.

Please note, on the mobile side, corp mail is not yet supported in our Mail app for Android or iOS, but that will change (PB&J!). And, like all dogfood offerings, there is a feedback link in the product. Use it generously so we can make the improvements to make Yahoo Mail the unquestioned inbox champion of the world. I pitty [sic] the fool who resists.

"Our corporate email doesn't support modern phones." That might actually be a feature. If I were Yahoo employee, I wouldn't want to read these kinds of memos at work let alone anywhere else.

Thanks for your support. It really does matter and we appreciate it.

What support? You said at the beginning only 25% of your pilgrims have signed up for corp Y mail (mangement using trendy lingo always works well, btdubs). Who is the world wrote thi…

Jeff Bonforte, SVP Communications Products Randy Roumillat, CIO

Oh. Two people wrote this email. All is becoming clear. Carry on sailor.