A Yahoo! homepage with a Google or Bing search bar?
Lately Yahoo! has been adding more and more third party tools to its website. Be it Facebook, Twitter or the ability to check your non-Yahoo! email accounts, the company is definitely opening things up. However, one thing we didn't expect was that the company would consider letting users choose an alternate search engine from the Yahoo! homepage.
Back in August Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz surprised a lot of people when she said her company "was never a search company." Despite having 20 percent of the search market, Bartz insisted, "her fortunes are tied to her pages," and it seems she's not the only Yahoo! who thinks so. This week senior director Burke Culligan said having other search engines on the Yahoo! homepage "may not be out of the question."
“Right now, we’re not doing that but long-term that may not be out of the question,” Culligan told analysts, according to PaidContent. “We want to provide the best experience for the user and, in some way, if that was the best experience for the user we might be open to that.”
Would you be more inclined to use the Yahoo! homepage as a one stop shop for your news, weather, mail, etc. if you could use an alternate search engine? Let us know in the comments below!
I think Yahoo, like AOL, have worn out their usefulness and should just go away.
Also, selling out to Microsoft made me less inclined to use them. I don't like Microsoft, but more than that, I don't want them to be successful because I think it's important to have a balance of power. They still own the operating systems and office apps; they don't need to own the internet. I'm more comfortable having Google in that situation.
Absolute power... Doesn't matter the company, it all turns out the same and all companies struggle to be top at everything they do, Google is trying to do the same now and will get as many haters as MS has if/when they get there.
preach on brotha
So, I guess my answer to you question would be, "No".
I think I would go back to Yahoo! if they let me opt in with Google search. I love Yahoo Mail having unlimited storage, along with integration with Flickr, etc.- that'd be great news. Realistically though, I don't see this happening. Yahoo and Google would have to (yet again) try to create some sort of partnership to split display/textual advertising dollars displayed via the Yahoo pages. With a pending Microsoft deal this also makes no sense. It's always good to dream though!