Microhoo or Yasoft: how does it affect you?

Read Eve Dmochowska's article here.

Given that Yahoo is the most popular website in the world - think about that - what can other web sites learn from this? Well Yahoo is a central resource for a lot of useful information isn't it: email, news, movies, video and quite a lot of other stuff.

In the end though, Yahoo is still 'email' to most people. That is its problem. Same goes for Google. It wants to be more, but it started as 'Search' and is still, essentially, a tool for 'Search'.

A lot of brands simply refuse to believe or accept that they can be and can do more than they were conceived to do. Coke can never also be a car, no matter how hard it tries.

Branding is exactly what it says it is, and you can't be what you are and something else. To do that you need to create another brand from scratch, and not many are prepared to do this. Herein lies great opportunity...

Why Google isn't New Coke - but Microsoft and Yahoo may be Pepsi

Google News Goes Local With Neighborhood Headlines

Google News is headed into your neighborhood with a new local feature that show the day's top stories for your immediate area, based on address, city or zip code. Google may be a bit late to the local news game, but the results are far superior to other sources.

To see the latest happenings in your area just head over to the Google News homepage and scroll down to the Local News section. Enter your location and you’ll see the results added to your page.

If it’s RSS results you’re after just head up to the sidebar and click your new local news entry and then click the RSS or Atom links and you’ll have a feed for your local news.

Given that there are plenty of other local news options out there, how does Google’s new offering stack up? In my experience, it blows the others away. I live in a small town outside of Atlanta and when I look for local news on most sites — like Yahoo for instance — I end up with maybe two stories from the local paper and the rest of the stories are about events in Atlanta, which is over an hour from my house — not what I would call local.

Google’s new feature on the other hand is entirely about the city I live in, pulling from the local papers, a couple of online news sites and even the local university’s student paper, which I have never seen show up in any other local news search.

In short, very impressive compared to the competition. Of course those in major metropolitan areas may find the results less compelling given that other sources are likely much better to begin with.

By Scott Gilbertson

More.