Simon Barratt

Yahoodocious

Yahoo are really looking to fight back against Google.  Competition?  A good thing, but I can't help but feel slightly concerned by the path Yahoo are taking.

They are snapping up small, innovative companies at an alarming rate.  And as they assimilate the products they purchase, they become more Yahooified!  This really hit home with the recent Konfabulator update.  I have been running Konfabulator for a while now on Windows systems (Dashboad on Mac is much nicer though!).  After receiving the update notification, off I went to the site to find the list of new features - but I could not.  However, I downloaded anyway and upgraded.

First thing to note was that the Konfabulator name is no more.  Assimilation is complete and it is now called the Yahoo! Widget Engine 3.0.  That really rolls of the tongue.  Looks like they recruited someone from IBM to come up with that name!  Also, the Konsposé feature has been renamed "Heads Up".

Anyway, I was glad I kept the installer for the previous version, so I could downgrade again!  It looks like they require you to have a Yahoo account for most of the widgets to be useful.  For example; the weather widget no longer allows you to enter your current location!  I assume if you have a Yahoo account, you maintain your location information in there, and that populates the widget.

Now that Konfabulator is so tied in with Yahoo, it is of less value to me.  I will just stay on the old version.

The worrying part in all of this is that they just bought deli.icio.us, they bought flickr not too long ago, and already offer a Yahoo login for flickr.  How long will it be, before they yank the flickr account and require a Yahoo account? Will my del.icio.us account follow suit?

Some of the biggest/best social innovators on the web are now gone, and Yahoo, is trying to package them together to offer an attractive package.  It's almost as bad as forcing passport accounts on you to touch anything from MSN!

No doubt Yahoo's Web 2.0 Search offering will be the wrapper that brings this all together.

In summary, don't upgrade to Konfabulator 3.0, and be cautious about del.icio.us and flickr!