Submitted by: kirkland on Friday November 10th, 2006 at 09:35 PM EST

Yahoo Inc. is making it easier to choose between e-mail and instant-messaging tools by bringing the two together in its popular free Yahoo Mail program, an executive said on Thursday.

Yahoo Mail, which counts 250 million active monthly users, plans in coming months to incorporate the Yahoo Messenger instant-messaging program inside the e-mail service, Yahoo executive Brad Garlinghouse said.

Consumers will be able to run the two programs in one Web browser. There is no need to download Yahoo Messenger software, a complication for users who are not technically inclined.

Yahoo's melding of e-mail and instant messaging follows the lead of rival Google Inc., which merged its Google Talk instant-message chat service with its Gmail e-mail program. But Yahoo's audience is roughly 10 times larger than Google's base of e-mail users, according to industry data.

» Full story @ Reuters