What happens in Vegas…

Posted January 9th, 2007 at 4:48 pm by David Riemer, Yahoo! Connected Life

 5 Comments / Filed in: Trends & News

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Unless it’s big announcements from Yahoo!, that is. As the Wall Street Journal reported before the sun rose on the insanely massive Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, we’ve announced Yahoo! Go 2.0 and Yahoo! oneSearch (along with a slew of distribution deals). A Yahoo! Go-enabled Motorola handset flew across the front page of Yahoo! yesterday to herald the moment. I’ve been here with the press, analysts, tech freaks, a gazillion temporary workers, and a bunch of Yahoos to enjoy the goings on.

Right now I’m in the Yahoo! “Big Scoop” tent/exhibit, which is a mashup of user-generated content, Yahoo! Go product demos, and Cold Stone Creamery ice cream. Several thousand people have already come for the ice cream and stayed for the exhibits. Light bulbs flash as our visitors come into the tent to blog, upload Flickr photos, and post video comments that reflect their take on the CES show (they are the stars!). They’re enjoying Moto-java crunch, Yahoo! Go-odness, and the Big Scoop Bonanza ice cream. But the demos are what they’ll go home talking about.

We’re demo-ing the sleek new Yahoo! Go for Mobile application, which features a swirling carousel of little widgets that bring local content, news, sports, finance, Flickr, and, of course, search right to your phone. The Yahoo! oneSearch product we debuted is a one-stop shop for mobile searching and is drawing raves. I used it throughout the day to follow the press coverage of it! And you might have heard that it’ll be integrated into the gotta-have-it iPhone unveiled at MacWorld today.

We’re also showing off the Yahoo! Fantasy Sports app and “my channel,” both for the IPTV environment in our Digital Home demos. Messenger on Vista, Jumpcut, and Answers are also getting some pub, and the gang from Yahoo! Tech is in the control room documenting everything (here and across the show).

Marco Boerries, who runs our Connected Life division, bought a new suit and showed it off during a 20-minute segment with Motorola CEO Ed Zander in the opening keynote of the show. He introduced products that we think will simply change the way people use their phones. Marco crowed that we’ve finally created content that “fits” the phone. And with 2 billion phones in the world (up from 1 billion only three years ago), that’s a lot of phones to fit!

We’re off to celebrate a great beginning for Yahoo! at CES 2007. Whatever happens tonight… well, that may just have to stay in Vegas.

UPDATE: Check out this Forbes.com video on Yahoo!’s CES presence.

David Riemer
VP Marketing, Yahoo! Connected Life

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5 Comments Add your own

Brinke | January 9th, 2007 at 7:10 pm

what happened to Go Desktop? It was announced 1 year ago and said ‘coming soon’ for a year. then…

~!shroty!~ | January 9th, 2007 at 11:57 pm

~!I THINK THAT THEY CAN DO BETTER THEN JUST CARS AND POSTERS like SOME MORE STUFF ON YAHOO MASSENGER better imvironment u know not that kids stuff like adults stuff and teen stuff there are good stuff… in the fashin category i dont really know is just that yahoo has been the same stuff and it has never change they need to add something new to make yahoo def… soo that it doesnt look like the same old yahoo every year do u even know what i mean its very true!~

GuillaumeB | January 10th, 2007 at 6:04 am

Seems like Go Desktop has been given up, the demo site is not even up so… I sent an email to Alex Laity, who deals with external inquiries for Yahoo! Go. Hopefully I’ll have a clear answer

Also I can’t believe Go Mobile 2.0 does not work on my Sony Ericsson W810i without even any plan to support it….whereas Gmail Mobile works like charm…

Jonathan Strauss | January 10th, 2007 at 10:57 am

Brinke & Guillaume,

I am the Product Manager for Go Desktop. In the excitement around launching Go Mobile, the Go Desktop site was temporarily taken down and it should be back up soon. While I can’t say when Go Desktop will be released, I can say that our colleagues in Mobile have set a very high bar that we plan to live up to.

SteveNYC | January 27th, 2007 at 11:19 am

Jonathan, I’m glad to hear that Go Desktop hasn’t been cancelled. I’ve been looking forward to it for some time. It’s been two weeks since your comment though and still nothing. Any idea as to when?