It gets better:

"People want an e-mail address that reflects who they are, whether they are signing up for an e-mail address for the first time, or simply updating their e-mail pseudonym to reflect the stage they are at in life," said John Kremer, vice president, Yahoo! Mail.

And if the stage you're in at life is circa eleven years ago, Yahoo has you covered.

Yes, the @RocketMail e-mail address is back and soon to be open to new users. Doing so might potentially afford some of the pre-millennial Net-using set a trip down memory lane -- Yahoo acquired RocketMail owner Four11 in late 1997.

But I'm not so sure that today's Web users will be so hot on snapping up a RocketMail address. Just the name alone seems like it would sound pretty... hmm... jet-aged to anyone who didn't know it during the 1990s. To me, it just reminds me of the days of dialup connections, some browser called Netscape Navigator and dreadful Web design.

If you're like me and occasionally get e-mail from a RocketMail address (Yahoo evidently has allowed pre-acquisition RocketMail users to continue using the service, although I haven't received one in ages, it seems) you assume one thing about the sender: They're seriously out of touch. (And again, unable or unwilling to set up their own domain name.)

Yahoo already dominates in Web-based e-mail, it's true. But I hope the company isn't putting too much faith in Ymail to safeguard itself against Gmail. The heyday of the Web portal is, arguably, ending -- users are always becoming more savvy, and are less susceptible to being "locked in" to portal services. Even if they use Yahoo mail, there's no reason to expect users to visit other areas of Yahoo's site.

That, incidentally, was the thinking behind Yahoo's initial purchase of Four11. It's 2008, Yahoo: A lot's changed since 1997. E-mail isn't a way to entice users into adopting more of your service. It has to stand on its own merits.

Adding a few users who want a new vanity address, without paying for it (by buying their own domain) doesn't seem likely to translate into a significant uptick for Yahoo's paid mail business.

It also doesn't seem likely to automatically translate into big bucks on the advertising front, which is where Yahoo really needs help. Trying to nab a greater share of the disposable lowest common denominator in Internet users results in one thing: Cheap ad impressions. Perhaps that's the reason why I never see any major brand advertisers on Yahoo Mail -- and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

If Yahoo is smart, they'll take a page from Google's profitable Gmail service and figure out how to slap higher-value, targeted ads onto Yahoo Mail. Otherwise, what's the point?