Om Malik chronicles the re-emergence of Yahoo! as a player. For ages now Yahoo! has appeared as if trying to be(at) AOL–and it’s earnings show great measure of success. But there’s nothing particularly interesting about watching a technology company becoming a media company. And the press coverage certainly showed its indifference: you couldn’t browse six feet of a newsstand’s shelves without running across a Google headline or three, while Yahoo! Internet Life was about the only place you’d hear even the whisper of a Y! yodle. But that’s changed over the past few months: Yahoo! has been re-emerging as a technology player, going head to head with Google on search features, building its own blogging-cum-social network tool, leap-frogging Google with it’s own Yahoo! Web Services offerings, and raising it’s geek cred with projects like the Buzz Game (disclosure: O’Reilly is involved in the Buzz Game), tech-savvy outreach by the likes of Jeremy Zawodny. And keep your eyes peeled for more geekworthy announcements from “the other search engine.”
And the change in focus goes deep. In the interactions we’ve had with Yahoo! management and chief developers alike, there’s an excitement, a voracious desire to listen, understand, harness, and build. All without forgetting the users who turn to Yahoo! every day for their news, weather, games, shopping, search, …