DailyTech - Yahoo to Launch New Home Page Beta

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Internet Yahoo to Launch New Home Page Beta
Shane McGlaun (Blog) - July 21, 2009 10:12 AM

11 comment(s) - last by mixpix.. on Jul 23 at 12:11 AM

New design will become the default Yahoo home page this fall

Yahoo has become well known recently as the company that famously turned down an offer from Microsoft to purchase the company at a significant premium on the stocks going price. The fallout from the failed deal ultimately cost then CEO Jerry Yang his position at Yahoo.

Yahoo has held its second place spot in the search engine rankings behind Google and has kept Microsoft at bay in third place. Yahoo is set to unveil a new home page that is said to be a blend of Yahoo's online content and products with popular social networking sites thrown in like Facebook and Twitter. Yahoo says that the home page makeover is the most significant the site has received since its launch more than ten years ago.

Yahoo SVP Tapan Bhat said, "It's a sea change in the way we think about products, the way we think about users, and the way we think about our business."

Reports have Yahoo and Microsoft in negotiations again for a possible purchase of Yahoo search operations. The most valuable thing that Yahoo owns is said to be the home page of the Yahoo search engine.

According to numbers from metrics firm comScore, the Yahoo home page had over 100 million visitors in June in the U.S. alone and over 330 million worldwide for the month. Despite the home page's popularity, Yahoo is losing momentum in the search market. The share of the U.S. search market Yahoo owns shrank from 20.1% in May to 19.6% in June. At the same time, Microsoft's search share grew slightly from 8% to 8.4%.

Yahoo says that the new home page is less cluttered than the existing page and shows fewer Yahoo services and products. The page will have a left side column that allows users to add in various apps that allow the preview of content from third-party websites like Facebook and Yahoo sites when the user rolls the mouse cursor over the apps.

The new home page will be available as a beta offering for users who opt to receive it starting today and it will be offered in other countries in the following weeks. This fall the new home page will become the default page for all Yahoo users.

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Search engine homepages

By Brandon Hill

(blog) on 7/21/2009 11:10:14 AM , Rating: 1

I don't think I've started a search from Yahoo or Google's homepage in ages -- or ever even visited them recently. I rarely use Yahoo in the first place, but I use the Google Toolbar extension in Firefox to launch my searches anyway.

RE: Search engine homepages

By Jeff7181 on 7/21/2009 7:01:52 PM , Rating: 2

I'm curious... why do you use Google Toolbar when there's a search bar built into Firefox?

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RE: Search engine homepages

By SilthDraeth on 7/21/2009 8:05:06 PM , Rating: 2

Yeah, I am curious to?

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RE: Search engine homepages

By quiksilvr on 7/21/2009 9:44:29 PM , Rating: 2

The toolbar isn't only for search. It gives you links to other applications.

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Twilight zone

By MonkeyPaw on 7/21/2009 6:18:14 PM , Rating: 2

Something very odd is that I've been able to use a page that looked almost exactly like this on one PC at work for over a year. I'd type in yahoo.com and a site like what they are "previewing" today is what appeared. The crazy part? No other PC I've ever logged onto since would give me the new look, and I couldn't find a way to enable it anywhere. I did nothing special to get that new site on that one PC. It was running IE7, just like all the others at the office. Crazy!

RE: Twilight zone

By stlrenegade on 7/22/2009 9:27:15 AM , Rating: 2

When this page finishes loading, what is the url? My wife at home has been hitting the homepage for the mobile version of yahoo even when you type www.yahoo.com. Same thing happened to one computer here at work. I just pinged www.yahoo.com to get the IP address, and stuck that in for their default homepage settings, and it brought up the regular yahoo page.

So, you might be pulling the m.yahoo.com (I think that was the address), because the mobile page looks similar to this new beta page.

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quick edit

By SlipDizzy on 7/21/2009 11:06:43 AM , Rating: 3

"Yahoo is has become well known..."

Second word, first paragraph... I think you forgot to erase a word.

Interface

By bubbastrangelove on 7/21/2009 11:07:47 AM , Rating: 3

Hopefully they'll take a page out of Google's success story and provide users with a clean interface as opposed to the mess they provided with Yahoo Mail Beta.

frequently.....

By HakonPCA on 7/21/2009 11:23:46 AM , Rating: 1

I like Yahoo, I use it more than google or bing; but they change their webpage it seems at least once a year, which makes it harder to keep getting used to.

RE: frequently.....

By HakonPCA on 7/21/2009 6:54:55 PM , Rating: 2

lol at getting voted down for my above comment :)

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Cool

By mixpix on 7/23/2009 12:11:24 AM , Rating: 2

I have been a Yahoo for a long time. There is just something I prefer about it. Only once in a while can I not find something and then I try Google.

This new version actually makes sense, now you can choose what shows up on the front page, and it doesn't just have to be Yahoo categories. I'll keep my eye on this to see how it develops.

I remember leaving feedback about being able to add/remove stuff as I see fit during the last beta. I don't care about horoscopes, cars, yahoo messenger. heh