Comments on: Yahoo! My Web and the continued evolution of the Internet operating system

By: Deidre Nair

Deidre Nair — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

lo Ian, It may be all about Integration, but with yahoo,its a at best a hodge podge. I’m a yahoo user for 6 years, now my ISP is also yahoo branded (BTYahoo!). Their toolbar is the worst of the lot .Saved searches was first introduced by a9.com. In fact a9.com search is extensible, I can search images, wikipedia, flights, msdn etc from a9, just 1click (i dont work for amazon, just like their toolbar :P). Yahoo toolbar is a couple of buttons with links to other parts of their site like bookmarks, myweb etc. Point: Integration with other features is good, as long as it isnt at the expense of usability. right now, i would’nt count Yahoo as a gaint with a chance.

By: Ian Murdock

Ian Murdock — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hi Deidre,

Thanks for sharing that. I’ve been meaning to take a look at A9, and I will. A9’s CEO, Udi Manber, was a former colleague of mine from University of Arizona days, before (ironically enough) he was hired away by Yahoo to be their Chief Scientist. He’s a very bright guy, one of the pioneers of search and the web. One advantage Yahoo has over A9 is Yahoo has email, contacts, calendars, and a bunch of other stuff ready integrated. Then again, in an Internet operating system composed of distributed services interconnected by a set of open APIs, I guess that doesn’t really matter much in the long run (and is probably better, since too much centralization could lead us right back into a monopoly situation).

-ian

By: Cori Schlegel

Cori Schlegel — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’d have to say that the most exciting thing about the Yahoo MyWeb offering is the attention.xml starting point.

While the Firefox toolbar is nice, the third-party Googlebar for Firefox works just as well, and Yahoo isn’t the best place to save information about site’s you’ve visited (again, Firefox extensions make del-icio-us and Furl the best places for that, IMHO). But the fact that they publish what you’ve saved in attention format is super-cool, even while it’s very basic. Love to see some traction on the attention.xml front.