Yahoo to revamp mail, search services

SUNNYVALE, CALIFORNIA: Yahoo!, which is struggling hard to gain its lost shine in the Internet search market, is making some key changes to Yahoo Mail, and is also rolling out a new look for the web-based service.

At an event at Yahoo's headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, chief product officer Blake Irving laid out a three-year vision for Yahoo! as an “innovative technology company with the largest digital media content and communications business in the world”.

“You are going to see some changes from us,” said Blake Irving at the 'Product Runway' event. Apart from a revamped Yahoo Mail site, Yahoo also showed changes to the appearance of Yahoo's Web search, saying that people will be able to get more expansive information on the first results page of a search.

“You are going to see things that happen fast, that are innovative and that make customers and advertisers delighted,” claimed Blake.

As part of the revamp Yahoo! is also weaving Twitter into its online pages so that people can more easily fire off or view updates at the microblogging service. Yahoo! already allows for Facebook updates and lets users import contact information from the social network.

In addition, Yahoo! executives also discussed how they would continue investing in applications tailored to mobile devices such as Apple Inc.'s iPad.