Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo! Opens Floodgates On Homepage To Devs
alphadogg writes to mention that at their "Open Hack Day" conference today and tomorrow, Yahoo plans on opening the floodgates to their homepage in hopes that developers will start building massive numbers of applications for general distribution. "Announced in April 2008, YOS [Yahoo's Open Strategy] aims to open all of the company's online services, sites and applications to third-party developers, as well as give end users a 'social profile' dashboard to unify and manage their Yahoo services. Swinging wide open the doors of Yahoo.com to external developers is a big milestone in this ambitious effort. Until now, Yahoo has erred on the conservative side when it comes to allowing tightly-integrated applications for its home page, opting to work individually with hand-picked partners."
Japan uses Yahoo. Massively. In fact it wasn't that long ago that I would get blank stares from people when mentioning google, and having to substitute yahoo instead... more recently people at least know what you are talking about, even if they aren't using it. Part of the reason for this is that they achieved huge brand recognition (if not much profit) when their subsidiary company Yahoo!Broadband did a pretty massive campaign to gain subscribers, giving away routers outside train stations, offering free three month connections and so on. (They are also tied into Softbank, one of the larger mobile phone companies here.)
E-bay is another pretty unheard of site, while Yahoo! auctions alone would probably keep the company afloat on its own over here. They are heavily used as a portal site and the usual first stop for people wanting to buy plane tickets or check the weather. For many people I think Yahoo is actually thought of as "the internet" and don't seem likely to go anywhere soon...