Yahoo! Wants To Become The Internet’s Indispensable Starting Point
January 8th, 2008
Yahoo! Co-Founder and CEO Jerry Yang kicked off the 2008 International CES Industry Insider Series today detailing the company’s vision for delivering the most personally-relevant and indispensable Internet experience to consumers worldwide. Addressing the needs of today’s users, Yang provided the first public demonstration of Yahoo!’s latest mobile offerings and offered a concept demonstration of the future of the desktop experience.
In his speech, Yang said “from the newest to the most experienced user, Yahoo!’s goal is to be the simple starting point for a much richer and more complex world so you can get more out of it. Whether you’re looking for fun, information, entertainment or social connections, you want to experience everything to the fullest – this is living life with an exclamation point.”
According to Yang, the company’s goal is to strengthen Yahoo!’s role as the preferred starting point for anything and everything users need online. To this end, the company plans to focus resources on becoming the best starting point for the entire web.
“To be the best starting point, it’s clear that we need to open the Yahoo! experience to any device or user. Mobile is a perfect example since more consumers are soon expected to come and go from the Net via their phones rather than desktops,” he said. “We’re committed to creating the best and richest mobile experience for all consumers – making it extremely personalized to their individual style and needs while opening up the Yahoo! mobile platform to allow anyone to participate.”
During his address, Yang welcomed the company’s executive vice president for Connected Life, Marco Boerries, on stage to demonstrate several new mobile offerings launched at this year’s CES and to elaborate on Yahoo!’s mission to foster a mobile ecosystem – ultimately serving billions of users – by providing indispensable and compelling services to consumers, developers/publishers and advertisers.
Yang also provided a preview of several exciting technology concepts that deliver upon his vision by sharing a glimpse of what his Yahoo! Mail inbox could look like. Yang demonstrated how Yahoo! could determine a user’s most relevant personal connections across both Yahoo! and multiple social networks. In doing so, Yahoo! would create a smarter mail box that prioritizes the most important messages from the most important people, providing a more personally relevant e-mail experience for consumers.
Not only did Yang show how Yahoo! Mail could prioritize a user’s most relevant connections, he also demonstrated how Yahoo! could open up Yahoo! Mail and incorporate mini applications (or widgets) from both Yahoo! and across the Internet. For example, by simply scrolling over relevant terms in their e-mail, users in the future could access things like maps, local reviews, invitations and more, directly from their inbox without having to open another browser.
By opening up Yahoo! Mail in addition to other services across Yahoo!, third party developers would be able to create new applications that delight hundreds of millions of users worldwide.
“Yahoo! has today outlined what is possible and that the future is not that far away,” said David Filo, co-founder and Chief Yahoo!. “Yahoo! is uniquely positioned to make this all a reality – we have scale, a huge community of users, great applications and APIs and insightful data. We now have an open platform for third party developers to build some interesting applications.”
“That’s the vision of the future we want to leave you with today: Yahoo! helping make the most of the Internet and the people you care about on whatever platform,” he continued. “We will continue working to provide you with an online starting point that’s more relevant, fulfilling and fun.”
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