Yahoo! Inc. has unveiled a new look as it strives to keep ahead of its competition and strengthen its advertising appeal. The overhaul marks the first facelift to Yahoo's home page since September 2004.
The redesigned page, unlike the older one, has included almost all the features like weather, check e-mail, listen to music or monitor local traffic conditions, without having to navigate on another webpages.
Another addition, called "Yahoo Pulse," offers recommendations and insights about cultural trends culled from the Web site's 402 million users worldwide.
Yahoo is making the upgrade as it battles for traffic with longtime rivals MSN, AOL and Google Inc. while also trying to fend off an intensifying threat posed by the rise of social networking sites such as MySpace.com.
"Our goal is to have the best page on the Internet," said Dan Rosensweig, Yahoo's chief operating officer. "We feel like this (redesign) does something great for everybody."
Yahoo regards the latest changes as the most dramatic renovations made to its front page since the site's 1994 debut as a bare-bones directory developed by Stanford University students Jerry Yang and David Filo.
