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Bold tech & web commentary

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Yahoo: Showing Signs of Being Alive

Yahoo has been all over the place recently, generating news and controversy in spades with bold moves to revitalize their properties, consolidate their core markets, and exit businesses with little future. David Dalka breaks the news that MyBlogLog, acquired previously by Yahoo, is due to get a new brand, new look and feel, and new features.

Finally, Yahoo seems to be showing signs of stirring - whether prompted by the PBM or otherwise.

There’s 4 signs of life that have been in the news recently:

Consolidating: Yahoo is closing Photos, focusing on Flickr. Say what you will about their methods, at least they’re eliminating some of their massive redundancy.
Focusing on Positive ROI: Goodbye Yahoo auctions.
Stirring up Strategic Discussion: the whole Microsoft Acquisition monster-under-the-bed has gone nowhere (which is a good thing), but more importantly shows that Yahoo is thinking strategically and (to some degree) pro-actively.
Investing in Acquisitions: the previously mentioned Flickr news, and David’s coverage of the MyBlogLog story are heartwarming - Yahoo is actually trying to capitalize on the value they paid for. Compare that to - for example - Google’s handling of Dodgeball.

My late night summary? Perhaps Yahoo is ready to come back and compete with Google - if not on core search tech, then at least with everything else.