Yahoo Inc. is offering free e-mail accounts under two new domains in the hopes of attracting new users and keeping current users who are unsatisfied with their unwieldy e-mail names.

Yahoo said the new designations, "ymail.com" and "rocketmail.com," will become available Thursday afternoon and will allow users to register an e-mail account that more closely resembles their name, rather than having to create an online handle that adds unnecessary characters.

"People can finally say goodbye to CutiePie4Ever80@yahoo.com or mattclark1977@yahoo.com," the company said in announcing the news Thursday.

Web e-mail is a crucial part of Yahoo's business, as it drives traffic to the company's websites, increasing the potential that users will click on revenue-generating advertising.

Yahoo first began offering free e-mail in 1997, after its $80-million US acquisition of Four11 Corp. — which included the original rocketmail.com domain.

Since then it has become the market leader in e-mail with over 266 million users worldwide, just ahead of Microsoft Corp., which has 264 million users, according to the latest data from research firm comScore Inc.

Internet search leader Google Inc. had 101 million people registered to use its Gmail accounts in April, according to comScore, but Google's numbers are rising at a faster pace than Yahoo and Microsoft.

Embattled Yahoo, which is involved in a dispute with shareholders after it spurned an attempted takeover by Microsoft, has been active in recent weeks in its efforts to attract new sources of revenue.

Last week it entered a non-exclusive partnership on search advertising with archrival Google. Under the agreement, Yahoo can run ads supplied by Google alongside its own search results and on some of its websites in the United States and Canada.

The new domain names will become available at 4 p.m. ET Thursday, according to Yahoo Canada.