Yahoo made significant changes to its online bookmarking application, bringing it more in line with a similar offering from Microsoft in Windows Live Bookmarks. Whereas the company's del.icio.us product covers social bookmarking, Yahoo says the new Bookmarks product is intended for strictly personal use.

The bookmarking feature would also be more tightly integrated into Yahoo's toolbar product with a more prominent button advertising that feature. According to the company, nearly 20 million people use Yahoo Bookmarks, the most of any online service.

Among the changes are a redesigned user interface, thumbnails to allow for easy organization and access of saved bookmarks, advanced search functionality, "drag-and-drop" functionality, and the ability to save bookmarks through the Yahoo Messenger service.

Users of Yahoo's MyWeb product would be able to migrate to either Yahoo Bookmarks or del.icio.us depending on their needs.

"By focusing on the Yahoo! Bookmarks and del.icio.us brands we are able to deliver to consumers market-leading products for both personal and social bookmarking," Yahoo search product management director Tomi Poutanen said.