Tara raises an interesting question:
Think about it. We have social networks with their own applications. We have browsers with built in search engines. We access the Internet by mobile phone. Why do we need a search engine based portal like the one Yahoo is putting together? How often do you go to the home page of a search engine? For me it’s almost never; I search via my browser. (I’ll go to a specialty search engine on occasion but the major search engines I’ll search from my browser.) I’ll go to a search engine’s non-search properties, which is what I do with Yahoo; I never go to the Yahoo home page but I’m at Yahoo Daily News constantly.
Spot On
Long time ago, I used Opera as my main browser. Opera has a set up where you can quickly search different search engines using a short code in the address line of the browser. In other words, to search Google for Transformers, I’d type “g Transformers” in the address line. (Without the quotes, of course.)
Now that I use Firefox, I can do that for almost ANY search by right clicking on the search box on a webpage and selecting “Add a keyword for this search”. I’ve got the same thing set up for Google, but I’ve got gi to search Google Images, yt to search YouTube, bi for Bing Images, z for Amazon, lis for LISNews, w for Wikipedia and so on. I can’t remember the last time I went to Google’s homepage to search. When they change their logo for a special day, I usually hear about it on Reddit (keyword search “r”) or Digg.
I go to Google for email, feeds, and docs. I go to Yahoo for Flickr and Delicious. Other than that, I rarely visit yahoo.com or google.com. I just don’t need to.
That’s why Google throws ads around your e-mail and ads around your search results. They know that’s what you’re going to see regardless of how you got there. To be honest, I’m really surprised that Google doesn’t throw ads on Reader or Calendar. Or maybe that’s future functionality.
Search has almost become transparent. Google understands this and branched out into other ventures like Docs, Voice, and other stuff.
Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes. Tycho (Jerry Holkins) @ Penny Arcade
I agree too
theres no way that I would use something like this. I don’t like the MSN messenger links that pop up when you first log in, I’m just too lazy to turn them off again.
If I want news I go to BBC News, if I want something specifically American I’d go to CNN, need more? Probably google news or search on Google for some local news coverage.
If I want Facebook I’ll go to Facebook, it’s already one of my most visited sites when I open up IE7 or Chrome (Work/Home). I don’t need a site like this.
When was the last time I used Yahoo to search for something? Years ago I think, it’s been totally invalidated for me.
I still go to the front page
I still go to google’s homepage. It’s useful when I want to search something like googlescholar.