PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY:
Yahoo! Challenges
AOL as a Portal
To World Wide Web
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By Walter S. Mossberg
THERE'S A REASON for the massive success of America Online, which has
attracted more than 11 million members and created the only household brand
name in cyberspace, despite a series of service and legal problems.
AOL has made it easy for average, nontechnical people to use its service as a
portal, or home base, for the entire on-line world. That includes AOL's
proprietary content and the much greater content on the World Wide Web.
With a ubiquitous AOL disk, even novices can be up and running on-line in
five or ten minutes. Once there, AOL provides simple, easy-to-use e-mail and
chat services, plus a clear, clean organization by topic. This simplicity has won
it the allegiance of most of the home users making their first plunge on-line,
and most have stuck with it despite the scorn of the techno-elite. Even a recent
price increase, to $21.95 a month from $19.95, doesn't seem to have sparked
mass defections, at least so far.
But now there's a new scramble to challenge AOL as the consumers' portal of
choice. Microsoft, which failed to unseat AOL with its Microsoft Network, has
a new Web-based portal service in the works. Netscape is trying to turn its
boring home page into an AOL-like on-line service. And CNET, a hot on-line
news site, has launched a portal service called Snap that is being distributed by
some Internet access providers.
But I think the challenger with the best chances may be another company with
a brand name almost as familiar on-line as AOL's: Yahoo!, the venerable
Internet search and directory service.
Over the past year or so, Yahoo has quietly added a surprisingly deep and
varied collection of content and services to its core search function. They
range from financial information and services, to customizable TV listings,
maps, on-line phone books, e-mail, chat rooms and more. All of this is aimed
at Yahoo's core audience -- people already on the Net.
YAHOO IS taking another major step this week in its portal strategy. It has
teamed up with MCI to go after AOL's target customers: people who aren't
on-line at home yet. The two companies are offering a disk that provides both
Internet access and content, just like AOL. Members of the service, called
Yahoo Online, will pay just $14.95 a month for the first three months, then the
price rises to $19.95, unless they sign up for MCI's long-distance phone
services.
I wasn't able to test the new Yahoo Online from scratch, because the CD-ROM
I received for testing was cracked, probably in shipping. But I have looked at
the new service's home page, and it does a better job of organizing Yahoo's
offerings into logical categories -- sports, news, health, business, etc. -- than
Yahoo has done in the past.
Like AOL's opening screen, it isn't too fancy, comes up pretty quickly and
concentrates on clarity. Unlike AOL, however, Yahoo lets you personalize the
service somewhat. You can place on the front page your favorite stock quotes,
sports scores and local weather, for example.
If you don't like the new opening screen, or don't use Yahoo via this new MCI
deal, you can still use two other views of the service: the traditional
search-oriented opening screen that's been around for years, or an existing
customizable news-oriented page called MyYahoo!, which also lets you search.
Whichever way you enter Yahoo, however, the real surprise to many people
will be how deep it has become. Instead of just referring users to other sites on
the Web, Yahoo now boasts a host of its own material, some of it generated
internally and some supplied by partners.
I BEGAN to realize this a few months back when I was shopping for a car. I
used Yahoo to search for auto-related sites on the Web, and stumbled upon
Yahoo's own automotive section, which lets you compare models based on
price or specifications, and even search on-line ads for used cars.
There's also Yahoo Games, which features on-line versions of chess, checkers
and backgammon, among others. Another feature, Yahoops!, is a sort of giant
electronic office pool for predicting the outcome of the NCAA college
basketball tournament. There's a Yahoo tax information service, a Yahoo
comics page, and localized versions of Yahoo for major U.S. cities and some
foreign countries. A senior citizens section offers health tips and a link to an
on-line bingo site. The Yahoo finance site checks your portfolio and has loads
of company press releases and business news.
Yahoo has also concentrated on adding people-to-people services, such as
e-mail, a "pager" function that seeks out pals on the Web, and directories for
looking up people and businesses. You can even get maps and door-to-door
driving directions for trips, a service I've relied on successfully. Another
favorite of mine: a button that just brings up a different random Web site
every time you click on it. There are too many other Yahoo features and
services to list here.
AOL has most of this, and with better graphics. Other Web sites and services
have some of it. And it can still be hard to find all of the stuff offered by
Yahoo, despite the recent organizational improvements. On some pages, it can
even be tough just to get back to the home page, so the user interface needs
work.
But Yahoo stands out as a potentially strong challenger to AOL because it is
already a household name on the Web, is a friendly site that is easy to use over
a slow modem, and has a critical mass of features. Yahoo is worth a closer
look. |
