Yahoo! Goes for consumer devices

Posted on 9 Jan 2006 at 10:50

Fittingly, Yahoo! chose the Consumer Electronics Show to introduce the new Yahoo! Go suite of products. Yahoo! Go aims to bring the company's wide range of products and services beyond the PC to a wide range of consumer electronics devices including TV and mobile phones.

Much of Yahoo! Go will be developed alongside Intel, which is anxious to establish its own Viiv digital home technology. Yahoo! will create customised Intel Viiv services, including music, photos and personalised video content for televisions, personal computers, laptops and on handhelds.

The first service out of the gate is likely to be Go Desktop which incorporates Yahoo! Widgets Engine with around 1500 widgets already and a Yahoo! Go Desktop dashboard to allow users to communicate via their PCs outside of a browser.

Go TV will provide a range of services to a PC-connected TV. This will include such things as the FlickR photo tagging and library service, Video Search and the option to check out local film cinema listings. It will also include Yahoo TV which will provides a 'personal video recorder' allowing customers to store and play back content on the TV via the personal computer.

Go Mobile will combine Yahoo's familiar communications services such as Mail, Messenger and Search as well as providing news, sports scores and share prices with the mobile phone's own built-in e-mail, messaging, address book and calendar applications and provide an online backup via the web or allow data to be transferred to a new phone.

Outside of the US, Yahoo! and Nokia will launch Yahoo! Go Mobile to consumers in 10 countries across Europe and Asia. Customers who buy Nokia 6630, Nokia 6680, Nokia 6681 and Nokia N70 devices will get Yahoo! Go Mobile pre-installed.

More at Yahoo! Go.

Author: Steve Malone