Is Yahoo still relevant?

The third most visited website on the Internet, Yahoo started as a web listing directory created in 1994 by two Electrical Engineering graduates, Jerry Yang and David Filo. It wasn't for another year that they realised the massive business potential their website had, and in 1996, Yahoo floated on the stock exchange.

Like other search engines in the late nineties, Yahoo moved to a portal format, aiming to increase the amount of time a user spent on the site. Email and gaming services were added, and rudimentary web hosting services were offered after the acquisition of GeoCities. Since then, Yahoo has continued to grow and diversify in the range of products it provides, but its search engine facilities have never managed to beat Google. In addition, the portal format seems less popular with consumers as they use a wide variety of distinct services such as Facebook and Twitter that have little, if no cross-site integration. In addition, Microsoft's launch of their new Bing search service shows that there's life in avoiding the Google template; but whether Bing will succeed where MSN Search and Windows Live Search failed is another question.

Yahoo thinks that the best step forward is to reinvent themselves; providing a modern, up to date web portal that acts as a landing page for theirs and other, third party services; attempting to act as a true hub for the web. Thus, they have spent nearly the last two years redesigning their front page, placing emphasis on ease of use and service integration; aiming to win back lost market share and to regain a sense of purpose.

Today, the new site launched. Immediate impressions are good; there's very little clutter and it even looks a little empty; whilst all boxes are ticked, you expect more; maybe because that's what the old template was like. It's also pleasingly designed; the change to a purple logo in May this year was a strange step given the ubiquity of the old red and black design, but in reality the colour matters less than the shape. The new site reflects this; it's simply laid out with tasteful and modern graphics; but nothing that really jumps out at you.

Visually, it's still not as distinctive as Google; but you have to consider the different target markets and how Yahoo wants to appear as an informational and organisational resource rather than simply a search engine. It could be argued that Yahoo appeals to a more cerebral thought pattern rather than Google's quick and easy format.

Whether the new format will succeed at winning back customers is difficult to predict; on the one hand it presents several new innovations that fill a worthwhile niche, but on the other hand public adaptation to new technology, especially on the web, is slow. Is it too late for the leopard to change its spots? Only time will tell.