Yahoo!, the éminence grise of search
engines, may be
grise no longer: It's heading into the shop for a
redesign, and its signature default gray background is on the chopping
block. "It's actually still on the table," says Tim Brady, VP in charge of
production at Yahoo!, adding that "All the new browsers are defaulted to
white anyway." This is Yahoo!'s first face-lift in over a year. Why? The new
face of Yahoo! makes more of the site's content accessible from the front
page, including news feeds and a link to its gaming site. The new page is
slightly fatter, too, but among search engines it's still the quickest
download around.
Another interesting choice: Yahoo!'s doing the
redesign as a public beta, with users
invited to send in comments. "We've had thousands of e-mails so far," says
Brady. "It's generally been great." Hey, why not let the net fix your
product? Works for Netscape.
