Yahoo unveils modular Go 3.0 mobile homepage to combat Google

Scott Fulton, BetaNews: Google's introduction a few months ago of its Android open operating environment for cellular phones introduced a measure of disparity between it and Yahoo. Yahoo's reformation strategy up to that point was based on paring its failing entertainment ventures and focusing on search, responsive content, and its advertising platform.

In order to equalize its standing, Yahoo needed a way to present the mobile part of its platform as a kind of open service unto itself.

That's the basis of today's introduction of Yahoo Go 3.0, its completely revised "home page" for mobile devices, if it can still be called that. In actuality, it has become more like Google Desktop except for the palmtop, not only presenting users with modules representing services that can be subscribed to, arranged, and swapped out, but providing developers with ways of incorporating plug-in services into Yahoo Go's repertoire.

Jerry Yang, CEO, Yahoo: It's clear that the world is becoming more open. By that, we mean, people are taking what they want to see, who they want to talk to, and where they want to go with them, and the world is becoming more interoperable. And also the world is becoming more social, as well as, everything is becoming mobile.

So people are looking for ways to bring all these capabilities together, making them personally relevant. The future is about making the Web experience simpler and more efficient for everyone.

Scott Fulton: In a series of demonstrations, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and Senior VP for Connected Life Marco Boerris showed applications running on the Yahoo Go platform.

Marco Boerris, Senior VP for Connected Life, Yahoo: The whole point is about opening up the Yahoo home page to the whole Internet -- not just Yahoo services, but the whole Internet. And this is one of the key features of the new Yahoo home page: You can now put any Internet content you want on that home page.

The way you do that is very easy, using the snippet gallery. The snippet gallery holds a selection of Internet services that have exposed themselves as snippets, and we expect this gallery to be very, very full...These are third-party snippets...and you can add RSS feeds...so it allows you to quickly customize your home page and get the services on there that you want.

Scott Fulton: The presence part of the equation, in one example, was provided by MySpace, which added not only recipients' full identities but their likes and dislikes, and what music they may happen to be listening to at the moment. And apparently their own handsets will be capable of attributing that presence to a geographical location, so you can not only see whom you're calling but where.

Boerris said that the current Yahoo Go 2.0 is being deployed on over 200 devices at present, and will soon be launched in a beta version for more than 30 of those same devices. Later, users could find the 3.0 version actually embedded into the firmware of their phones, as Boerris added that the company plans to provide firmware-capable images of the final release to Motorola and LG, among others.

Marco Boerris: No matter what type of phone you have, it's our purpose, it's our mission in life to make sure Yahoo Mobile widgets run in the best possible quality on these devices, creating rich user experiences for consumers, but also creating an environment, an ecosystem for developers and publishers that really can now, for the first time, through the Yahoo Mobile developer platform, access hundreds of millions of potential users today. No other platform does that today in mobile.

Tim Conneally, BetaNews: Finally, Yahoo showed off prototype mockups of an improved Yahoo mailbox, which could prioritize contacts according to frequency of contact, and index them as connections in participating sites, like LinkedIn and MySpace.

In the demo, an evite suggesting dinner for the evening was opened, and dragged into a widget that opened up a map of the area and reviews of the restaurant. According to this data, the plans were changed to tailor the event to his contacts, and the evite was amended, all still within Yahoo Mail.

Yahoo Co-founder David Filo said today his company wants to continue making Yahoo a relevant and fun starting point. But rather than keeping Yahoo a starting point, developments such as these look like they are aimed at making Yahoo a more complete communications solution.