Yahoo! Jumps Into The World Of Third Party Applications

A "start page" allows Yahoo users to access a number of the company's applications, like Yahoo Mail and Flickr, as well as the requisite news-and-weather mobile features. /// Yahoo has additionally launched a developer initiative to put third-party widgets into its mobile offerings. Initial launch partners include eBay, MySpace, and MTV News; these applications can be selected and installed directly from Yahoo Go's mobile "Widget Gallery." Image Credit: Yahoo!

Yahoo! Jumps Into The World Of Third Party Applications

In a move to show its relevance to the mobile applications world, Yahoo! unveils a demonstration of its Go 3.0 platform at a keynote speech from the CES in Las Vegas yesterday.
Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang used his speech at CES to announce several mobile efforts including a redesigned mobile home page and a beta of Yahoo Go 3.0, which will be open to widgets created by third-party software developers.

Confusion as to whither this demonstration was an actual launch of Go 3.0 or not seems a little moot in that Yahoo! needs to make a bold move on which to stave off rival Google’s advanced recognition of the future of smartphones and their access to the internet.

Widgets to get a third-party platform on Go 3.0 - Image Credit: Yahoo!

This excerpted from Telecompaper -

Yahoo! adds third-party mobile apps with Go 3.0 launch
Published: Monday 7 January 2008 12:59 PM CET

Yahoo! has unveiled a range of new mobile internet services at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. In an effort to compete with rival Google's growing presence in the mobile world, Yahoo! has launched a new version of its Go mobile platform, a re-designed mobile home page and a mobile application developers platform. The company said it wants to create and lead its own open mobile ecosystem, serving consumers, developers, publishers and advertisers.

The Yahoo! Mobile Developer Platform aims to speed up the launch of mobile applications, helping developers build mobile widgets that can launch simultaneously on hundreds of different mobile phones.

The move to embrace third-party developers is part of the new Yahoo! Go 3.0 platform, which in addition to Yahoo! services will now also include third-party applications.
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The new mobile home page is initially available on the Apple iPhone, several Nokia S60 devices and select Windows Mobile devices. The latest Go software will also incorporate display advertising for the first time, alongside existing search ads.
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Start page as seen from the show floor at CES, Las Vegas - Image Credit: Yahoo!

And this excerpted from CNET -

Yahoo hopes developers don't pass 'Go'
Posted by Ina Fried - Updated at 12:10 p.m. to include potential Yahoo Mail features.

LAS VEGAS--Yahoo is hoping to prove it can be as mobile and open as its rivals.
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"I think it is time to get Yahoo yodeling again," he said [Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang].

The goal, he said, is the same as in the early days--to make Yahoo the starting point on the Internet. But he said the world is far more open, social and mobile.

"We're already the home page for hundreds of millions of people."

Yang and Marco Boerries, executive vice president for Yahoo's Connected Life unit, showed off the new Yahoo Go complete with a lot of eye candy, including an animated user interface and mobile Flickr and maps applications.

Yahoo is hoping its reach will woo developers to write widgets using its XML development environment, dubbed Blueprint.

In its early beta form Yahoo Go 3 will run on 30 devices, but the company will move to reach the more than 300 devices that can run Yahoo Go 2.0.

Beyond that, widgets developed for Yahoo's platform can also run on phones that can't run the full Yahoo Go. Any phone with a browser that can display plain HTML or XHTML can run the widgets.
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Yahoo is working with some phone makers, including Motorola, to also allow cell phones to run widgets natively from the phone.

Yang also demonstrated a future desktop version of Yahoo Mail that would sort through an inbox, prioritizing status updates and messages from people who are part of a user's social network. The sort function highlighted messages from Yang's most important contacts.
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He also showed an inbox that could get voicemail and text messages, as well as tabs for third parties, potentially folks like MySpace and Evite.

Yang stressed that the features he showed off were not part of a current or pending release.

"This is not a launch." he said. "This is more of a concept demonstration."
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To reiterate - confusion as to whither this demonstration was an actual launch of Go 3.0 or not seems a little moot in that Yahoo! needs to make a bold move on which to stave off rival Google’s advanced recognition of the future of smartphones and their access to the internet.

The Go 3.0 agenda effort isn't actually a mobile operating system, it's a piece of software that piggy-backs on a handset's existing firmware. This could prove difficult for Yahoo.

This excerpted from Webware –

Green light for Yahoo Go 3.0
By Caroline McCarthy – January 7, 2008, 8:14 AM PST

But, as a New York Times article notes …

"Other companies, including cellphone makers like Nokia and Apple, and mobile software providers, like Google and Microsoft, are trying to lure third-party publishers and programmers to create services for their mobile platforms," the story pointed out.

A company eager to put its brand into the mobile market could consequently find it counterproductive to create widgets for a downloadable software package like Yahoo Mobile. The application comes pre-loaded on a number of partner handsets, but the Times article explains that U.S. cell carriers remove this prior to retail, meaning that it has to be manually downloaded. Widgets created for Yahoo Go quite likely won't have the reach of applications created for operating systems like Apple's iPhone firmware or Google's hyped Android project.
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