Those 800-gigabyte gorillas of the Web, Google and Yahoo!, are locked in a furious battle to capture our eyeballs—and the winner, so far, is the user. Each portal has launched a flurry of nifty features and cool tools in the past few months. Here's a guide to the best new stuff.
GOOGLE
Google Earth: This software, available as a free download at earth.google.com, lets PC users navigate a 3-D map of the globe, jumping from city to city and seeing remarkably detailed satellite images.
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YAHOO!
Yahoo! Next: Yahoo!'s virtual laboratory at next.yahoo.com offers experimental tools like Mindset, which lets you sort search results according to what you're doing, such as shopping or researching.
Yahoo! 360°: This is like Friendster, Blogger and a newsgroup rolled into one. Create an online club with friends or family members and keep a journal with photos and lists of your favorite books, songs and movies.
Yahoo! My Web 2.0: My Web lets you tag interesting sites, news stories and blogs, store them in a searchable database and share your finds with friends. You can also see what sites other users have deemed tagworthy.
Yahoo! mail: Coming this summer: a new version of the Web's most popular e-mail service that will feature a sleek interface designed to improve the reading, sorting and composing of messages.
Meanwhile, at AOL and MSN
• AOL has launched a preview of its new free Web portal, featuring a good video search that has already indexed more than 1 million video clips
• Later this summer, MSN will debut its Virtual Earth feature, which will compete with Google Earth and offer even more detailed images. Its new search page, search.msn.com, has a "local search" feature and is increasingly powerful and easy to use