Yahoo! on Thursday began a promised home-page makeover intended to revitalise its popular but financially stumbling website.
The pioneering California internet firm is letting randomly chosen users in Britain, France, India and the United States test a ”next-generation design” of a homepage used by more than 400 000 people worldwide.
”We’re working on a new home page that will help you get more out of the internet, make more of your precious time, and make sense of all the things going on in your world,” the Yahoo! vice-president of Front Doors said in an online posting.
Yahoo! seeks feedback on the redesign before rolling it out to all users in coming months.
The new look is part of a website overhaul that includes opening the platform so users can plug in mini applications created by outside software developers.
The revamped Yahoo! home page has a ”dashboard area” featuring tools for people to check weather forecasts, local events and web-based email accounts from Yahoo!, Google and AOL without leaving the website.
Yahoo! claims more than 500-million users worldwide but has been struggling to cash in on its popularity.
Yahoo!’s sagging fortunes and Google’s ascension as internet advertising king prompted Microsoft on January 31 to offer to buy Yahoo! for $44,6-billion in a half-cash, half-stock deal.
Microsoft was eager to combine online resources with Yahoo! in order to better battle Google. It walked away from negotiations on May 3 after Yahoo! rejected an offer it raised from $31 to $33 per share, which amounted to $47,5-billion.
Yahoo! subsequently made a deal with Google to put its online advertising expertise to work on Yahoo! websites. That deal is to take effect later this year if it passes muster with US anti-trust regulators. — Sapa-AFP