Yahoo’s released a a Firefox version of its toolbar. To this point, it was only available to Internet Explorer users. Yahoo has taken advantage of Firefox’s RSS capabilities to create a button that allows people to automatically add blogs and anything else with RSS feeds to their MyYahoo pages.
Ironically, Google does not yet make a Firefox version of its toolbar, even though Google is the default home page for Firefox and the default search engine for the browser’s search box. There are these third-party, work-arounds, though.
What’s funny is how we got the news about Yahoo’s new toolbar. Not more than five seconds after we put down our headphones for the morning break in Google’s webcasted analyst meeting today, the phone rang with a call from Yahoo. Their PR folks were watching the Google webcast too, and knew the very minute that reporters would be free to talk. The competitive juices sure are flowing over on First Street in Sunnyvale. Remember, these are the same folks who “coincidentally” made a video search announcement on the same day as the launch of Google Video.
2 Comments
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Jack Poller said:
Ironically, Yahoo’s obsession with Google may be it’s downfall.
I did a 3-month stint at Netscape, just after they went public — Most Netscapers spent the first few hours of their day reading Microsoft web pages and news articles to discover what the folks in Redmond were doing, and trying to figure out a way to block, counter, or out-do Bill’s minions. The net effect was a complete paralysis and a conversion of the company from a radical disrupter to a reactionary has-been.
It’s only been the desire to create their own thing that allowed Mozilla to craft FireFox.
When Yahoo shifts its focus from Google to the end user, it will find the number one spot it so desires.
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Danny Sullivan said:
Yeah, but Google beats the others far more to that type of punch. Index is now 8 billion right when MSN was going to be 5 billion? Google Local just happens to hit the home page when YQ launches? Google Maps goes out right when Ask buys Bloglines? Google’s the master of keeping its competitors from having a pure newsday all to themselves. But all in all, it sure makes life covering it all exciting.
