Most people consider Google and Yahoo as rivals, not just as search engines, but as online companies that offer free webmail services to their customers. Now, however, Google and Yahoo are uniting to shoot for one common goal: End-to-end email encryption.

Indeed, according to an article published on Gizmodo early this morning, Google and Yahoo are teaming up to make their respective webmail systems stronger and more secure. Google has been working toward Gmail encryption for quite some time now, especially given last year’s controversy about the NSA and PRISM.

Yahoo, on the other hand, has not been quite as on top of things, but the company has still made good progress. In fact, this week at Black Hat, a security conference in Las Vegas, Yahoo told audiences that it would have a completely encrypted webmail system in place by sometime next year. Google expects about the same timeline for Gmail encryption.

So where does the teamwork come in? In order to provide for true “end-to-end” encryption, email systems need to use compatible encryption security. As two of the biggest email services in the world, Gmail and Yahoo Mail account for nearly 700 million people worldwide. That also means that a lot of people using Gmail addresses are sending messages to people using Yahoo Mail addresses, and vice versa. In order to maximize security, Google and Yahoo are working together on their email encryption software so that it will be fully compatible between the two systems.

Such compatibility will provide for true end-to-end email encryption, keeping messages safe and secure for their entire journey from one email address to the other. This will allow Google and Yahoo users to communicate with one another without worry that their emails are being intercepted and read by someone else.

However, in addition to creating a safer email environment for their own users, Google and Yahoo are hoping that their teamwork has one other result: The industry standard for email encryption. If all other email systems adopt Google and Yahoo’s encryption, then the entire internet could be safer.