Yahoo is developing for Google Glass in an attempt to touch people’s lives every day. This was revealed by Marissa Mayer as she laid out the company’s identity and future at the Wired Business Conference.
Mayer explained that the company wants to help you do all the core mobile activities you do each day, including checking news, email, sports, finance, and weather. While other companies are more focused, she said “it’s okay for us to have an overall offering”.
Yahoo now has 300 million mobile users per month, and 700 million on desktop. The only problem with having so many apps is the switching costs.
“It takes time to do each of your “daily dozen” activities, but they shouldn’t interrupt your life. That’s why Yahoo is developing for Google Glass, which could make its offering a seamless part of your day.” Mayer said.
Special apps may have to wait, though, as first and foremost she wants to make sure Yahoo’s homepage and other existing products work flawlessly on the tiny Glass screen.
This is the one reason Yahoo was so excited to acquire news condenser Summly in March. ”Summarization will be a core technology in mobile. Short summaries add value”, especially when you’re trying to keep moving, or are imbibing information through a wearable computing device like Glass.
The renewed focus on the user experience is what ties together Yahoo’s strategy. Rather than just throwing content at people, it wants to make that content enjoyable to consume. It’s not abandoning content by any means, and is planning original programming plus more licensing deals like buy Saturday Night Live clips.
Close collaboration is what will let Yahoo move fast and make products for all of us. “The moonshot for Yahoo is being on every smartphone, every tablet, every PC for every Internet user. For me the word portal is somewhat limiting.” Yahoo doesn’t want to just lead you to utility, it wants to be that utility. She said.
Source: Tech Crunch
