First Google, Now AOL Copies Yahoo!

Remember last year when Jeremy Zawodny said Google had copied a Yahoo ad for their version of IE7? Well, it looks like AOL is getting in on the act now, they are beta testing a new version of their homepage, here, and it looks almost identical to Yahoo’s homepage. AOL says they are just doing what works, and apparently Yahoo’s homepage works for them.

Nice portal…but it is nearly identical to Yahoo home page, which was redesigned last year. Click on the image above for a larger view. Internally, I’m hearing AOLers refer to the new portal as “the Yahoo Portal” although its official name is AOL 3.0.

AOL says they are building best of breed products, not simply copying things from Google, Yahoo and others that are proven to work and porting them to its less cutting-edge audience. In the past year, though, we’ve seen them largely copy digg and then release a new mail product that would have been awesome two years ago but which stacks up poorly to the current versions of Gmail and Yahoo Mail. Source: AOL One Step Behind Again: New Home Page Identical To Yahoo

Now, I can understand the positioning, feel of the page, and putting your stuff where it will get the most clicks, but come on, surely they could do it without it looking so much like Yahoo’s homepage. Right?

Posted by Jimmy Daniels April 2007

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