Comments on: Yahoo, Google wrestle to sell changes

Obama and McCain aren't the only ones trying to lobbying for change. But Yahoo and Google are running into resistance.

[rhaft22]

Which part of "free" isn't clear?.... Free to do what they like, free to cancel your service, free to change your service. If you want to have more of a say in what goes on you may need to pay for your services.

[jmeeks]

Stephen,
The part you seem to miss about the iGoogle page updates is that it's MY page they changed. Hell, they can change all of the Google pages they want, just leave the page you've given me alone. I think that's where all the vitriol comes from. You are correct, it took a ton of messing around with where everything was to get it like I wanted, and now it's all different, and doesn't work very well for me anymore. Yeah it's "free" but it's supposed to be a free service, where's the "service" in changing something that only I see so that it doesn't work for me anymore?

[JohnnyL]

Stephen,
I could not care less if Yahoo changes my profile. with Yahoo that is not the issue. the issue is they never notified anyone that their profile has been blanked out. If I had not stumbled upon this issue on another website I would never have known. In terms of their relationships with their users, Yahoo has always been mediocre at best and abysmal the rest of the other time. Yahoo can do all they want with their stupid little Yahoo 360 pages since I don't use them but I have several profiles that I use within other yahoo services that I now have to go and re-do...all without a single email or notice. also your reporting on this is useless. You spend a good part of the time bashing the complainers and letting both Google and Yahoo of the hook as to how they handle their changes. you obviously have too close a tie with the industries and companies you report on and should immediatley look for another line of work as nobody that reads this can put any reliance on your reporting.

[ofmyony]

At first I was concerned about the Igoogle changes. I have been using it everyday since and it is a much improved version. There are other changes not mentioned in the article. I like the new Gmail widget, you are able to manage your messages within the widget (nice feature). I also believe that Google is preparing it's properties for inclusion on the Android platform and the new changes seem to make sense if you add in Android.

I think the previous version had a more natural design feel with the tabs across the top. However there is more function with the new sidebar and at the end of the day I will always want more function over design.

[fdunn3]

Anybody using these companies deserves what they get. HA-HA!

[EricGourmet]

I was using the Google Classic page to search on the web, and the iGoogle page to check my subscriptions. Now I can use the iGoogle page to do both. I think this is an improvement, even if it takes a bit of time to get use to it. I feel a bit disorientated not to have my subscriptions at the top of the page.
As a Google user, I am confident their improvements means a better user experience. Let see what's next.

[drewdoog]

'The web is changing, therfore we are changing'. So that means because some overzealous group of programmers at w3c says things are changing, you think that you have to cash in on these changes?
Its simple. these sites that change, alienate loyal users who end up leaving.
yahoo changed their search engine-i left yahoo search
yahoo changed their email-i left yahoo email
yahoo changed their My Yahoo-I left my yahoo
yahoo changed their News-I left yahoo news

[ti99_forever]

What annoys me most is that a company that has been around as long as Yahoo! should know how to handle email!

They have forced changes on me, even in Classic! mode!!!

The new interface inserts a non-editable, non-breakable blue line down the left side of quoted material. You cannot insert your own text within quoted email to answer certain parts of the original posters email.

If you convert it to text, so you *can* insert your comments, the quote marks (the characters that mark a quote, generally ">") disappear! So you cannot intersperse your comments within theirs where others can tell the difference!

In Classic! mode, it changed to not adding the ">" characters for the quoted material, to adding it ("Yea, it is fixed") to a week later back to the broken version.

Funny thing is, I have 3 Yahoo! email accounts, and different accounts have different versions of the same "Classic!" interface. One of my accounts was "forced" to upgrade to the new interface, without any exception - and finally it allowed me to go back...

Yahoo! Tech support is clueless... they couldn't even spot an issue where a secondary email address had disappeared from my profile and their system wouldn't allow me to edit & save it! Finally, many emails and days later, they finally edited my profile themselves to add it... they couldn't explain why I couldn't edit it myself.