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February 20, 2007

Inspect-our-Gadget ‘ Yahoo! Search Gadget for Vista

Hi, I’m Jonathan from the Yahoo! Desktop Products team. The Yahoo! Search team invited me to write about our latest collaboration, the Yahoo! Search gadget for the Windows Vista Sidebar. My team’s mission is to enable users to access Yahoo! services from anywhere on their personal computer desktop. And while we have quite a few Yahoo! products already available for Windows Vista, today I wanted to focus on our first Vista-only product, the Yahoo! Search gadget.

The Windows Vista Sidebar is a new feature in Vista that, similar to our own Yahoo! Widgets or Apple’s Dashboard, allows you to run mini applications (called gadgets) on your desktop that are connected to the Internet without having to open a browser. Since Yahoo! Search is one of our most popular services, it was a logical choice for our first ever Windows Vista Sidebar gadget. We designed the Yahoo! Search gadget to feel at home in Vista’s new visually rich environment with animations and four shiny colors to choose from. And whether docked in your Sidebar or floating on your desktop, the Yahoo! Search gadget puts Yahoo! Web Search, Answers, Local, Video, and more at your fingertips. Of course, there are a number of other ways to integrate Yahoo! Search into your Vista experience, including search plug-ins for IE7 and Firefox as well as the Yahoo! Toolbar also for IE7 and Firefox.

We’ve got a lot of stuff in the Vista pipeline, including more gadgets and a new Yahoo! Messenger client, which you can preview here. Stay tuned’

Jonathan Strauss
Yahoo! Desktop Products

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Comments

  1. Since launching Yahoo! Search Builder back in August we’ve received a lot of great feedback and have been working to address the issues nearest and dearest to our users.
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    Posted by: Krishna | February 20th, 2007 1:04 pm

  2. Not before I switch to Vista. The list is extraordinary and I must say I am impressed, but I am not in hurry to install gadgets before completely switching over.

    -Anyway good read

    Posted by: AYub | February 21st, 2007 2:38 am

  3. Nice look and feel – but where is the localised option? In the settings there should be a dropdown to select your location so that local search, shopping, etc actually work outside the USA…! There’s a whole wide world out there!

    Posted by: Amir Sadeh | February 21st, 2007 3:18 am

  4. How can I shut the Yahoo search off? when I try to go to a web page after checking my E-mail on Yahoo, It comes back as a search by Yahoo inseatd of going to the web page. to get on with what I’m trying to do I have to shut down to proceed. Vvvvvery iritating!!!!

    Posted by: Dick Nellis | February 21st, 2007 7:46 am

  5. One question relating to the Yahoo! search function:
    Why is it that when I do a search for GigaTribe in Yahoo! it comes up with 22,000 results, but the same search for GigaTribe in Google comes up with 40,000 results?!

    (rest assured, I prefer using Yahoo!, I like seeing the day’s headlines right before I perform a search!)

    Posted by: John | February 21st, 2007 8:42 am

  6. I think it’s great that Yahoo! is embracing the idea of software AND service rather than drinking the all-SAS-all-the-time Kool-Aid, but I have to ask the obvious: why haven’t Widgets been incorporated into the overall Yahoo! experience yet?

    C’mon, guys – their absence from the old My Yahoo! is understandable, but their still apparently not integrated into the newer product and that’s not only inexcusable, but just plain dumb. Stop letting Google eat at your table, already!

    P.S. – Y!360 needs gadgets big-time, too.

    Posted by: Jeff O'Connor | March 12th, 2007 8:06 am

  7. Yahoo messenger should incorporate multiple languages like msn mesenger!

    Posted by: Exclusive Home Furnishings | May 15th, 2007 10:52 am

  8. Vista is a great operating system upto date!

    Posted by: Scented Soy Candles | May 15th, 2007 10:53 am

  9. Users should have an option to turn on/off the search box…….

    Posted by: Cubic Zirconia CZ Jewelry | May 15th, 2007 10:54 am

  10. We need to be sure that everything works fine before installing any new gadgets

    Posted by: Throw Pillows & Blankets | May 15th, 2007 10:56 am

  11. As a frequent user of the internet, I have to admit that for the past while I have been using Google as my main search engine, so much so that I became quite dependent on this and forgot all about Yahoo. I have recently however, through curiosity more than anything, started to use Yahoo again and actually feel that currently Yahoo result seem to be more accurate than Googles. There was a time when Yahoo placed too much weighting on blogs. Now they don’t, whereas Google still seems to be placing a lot of weighting on articles.

    Posted by: Neil Simmons | June 25th, 2007 1:43 am

  12. Hmm…Ill have to try Yahoo! Search Gadget for Vista. I just recently got Vista and still dont know all the features that you can play around with.

    Posted by: Justin | July 2nd, 2007 5:09 am