Last week Yahoo! announced updates to the way it’s crawler scoured the web (which not everyone is happy with, by the way). This week they’ve updated one of their most popular non-search products - Yahoo! Mail. In an announcement on the Yodel Anecdotal blog, Yahoo! says that the “beta” label has been stripped, several new features have been added, and the AJAX-heavy version of Y!Mail is ready for mainstream use:

So I’m doubly excited to announce the launch of the all-new Yahoo! Mail today. Not only are we launching a brand new version of one of the most popular Web mail services in the world, but we’re unveiling a solution to my texting woes, and giving people around the world more ways to connect. With the new Yahoo! Mail, people can send and receive free text messages in their email to and from any mobile phone number in participating markets including the US, Canada, India and the Philippines.

As of the writing of this post, users of the beta version of Yahoo! Mail are still seeing that version - sans the new SMS feature - so I can’t comment on it.

But it should be interesting to see how Yahoo!’s audience reacts to the new version. For the time being, the “classic” version of Yahoo! Mail is still available and the company says users can switch between the two. No time frame is given for the retirement of the classic interface… so maybe it’s staying for good.

Users of Google’s competing Gmail service have been used to an AJAXy interface since day one. But Yahoo! has gone one step further and made it’s mail service - which is much, much more popular than Gmail - into an AJAX powerhouse: full drag-and-drop, a desktop app-like interface, tabbed support, etc.

If user studies are correct, this shiny new version should go over well with Yahoo! fans (who tend to prefer Yahoo!’s big, bold approach to design as compared to Google’s simplistic design).

What do you think about the new Yahoo! Mail? Is it too drastic a change? Will it turn off long-time users? Will it pull users lost to Gmail back into the fold? And how should Yahoo! leverage it’s huge mail user base in the search engine battles?