Tech
Yahoo Advertises New Search Technology
Yahoo has tried a lot of promotional ideas over the years (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
OLD DOG, NEW TRICKS

Yahoo is still one of the most visited websites on the planet

Now the internet OG is introducing new features to help users tackle inbox overload. Yes, AI is in the first sentence of the press release.

David Crowther

Internet brands don’t tend to live very long.

Myspace, Vine, Flickr, BuzzFeed, Napster, Bebo, Vice, Tumblr, and many more have exploded onto the scene before either fading into obsolescence, obscurity, or imploding altogether — and those are just a few of the ones you’ve heard of. Thousands more never made it beyond a domain registration and a traffic-less website.

It’s remarkable, then, that Yahoo — one of the earliest mainstream internet brands — is still alive and kicking at the ripe old age of 31, with the private-equity-owned brand this week announcing a new “catch up” feature to its email service, Yahoo Mail.

In terms of features, it’s not exactly revolutionary stuff: AI-powered summaries of your emails that give you the option to delete or keep the messages hardly represent an innovative breakthrough in digital communications. Even the marketing, which includes a collaboration with a streetwear brand to create a range of “Anti Email Email Club” tees and sweatshirts, feels very 2010s.

But, for all the criticisms you could throw at an internet dinosaur like Yahoo, it’s hard to deny its continued longevity. Its email service reportedly still has over 200 million users, and data from Similarweb finds that Yahoo.com is still the sixth-most-visited website in America.

Yahoo visits
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Racking up an average of more than 1.6 billion page views from March to May, Yahoo is pulling in more site visits than ChatGPT, Wikipedia, X, LinkedIn, The New York Times, ESPN, and many other household names.

Interestingly, though, we’ve started to notice a small decline in Yahoo’s traffic, per Similarweb data. The site notched 351 million visits in the week ending May 23. That was the lowest since at least April 2024, down 13% on the average weekly figure of the past 12 months. Can Yahoo still be relevant at 40 years old? What about when it hits half a century? Only time will tell.

Related reading: ChatGPT is soaring up this leaderboard — last month Americans visited the website of the AI chatbot more than Wikipedia.

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Amazon closes at all-time high

Fresh off strong earnings Thursday, Amazon saw its stock price end the week at a record closing high of $244.22.

The stock is up 10% so far this year.

The e-commerce and cloud giant beat analysts’ revenue and earnings, and its massive gain was responsible for more than all of the positive return delivered by the SPDR S&P 500 ETF on Friday.

tech
Rani Molla

Google uses an AI-generated ad to sell AI search

Google is using AI video to tell consumers about its AI search tools, with a Veo 3-generated advertisement that will begin airing on TV today. In it, a cartoonish turkey uses Google’s AI Mode to plan a vacation from its farm before it’s eaten for Thanksgiving.

Like other AI ad campaigns that have opted to depict yetis or famous artworks rather than humans, Google chose a turkey as its protagonist to avoid the uncanny valley pitfall that happens when AI is used to generate human likenesses.

Google’s in-house marketing group, Google Creative Lab, developed the idea for the ad — not Google’s AI — but chose not to prominently label the ad as AI, telling The Wall Street Journal that consumers don’t actually care how the ad was made.

Google’s in-house marketing group, Google Creative Lab, developed the idea for the ad — not Google’s AI — but chose not to prominently label the ad as AI, telling The Wall Street Journal that consumers don’t actually care how the ad was made.

tech
Rani Molla

Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft combined spent nearly $100 billion on capex last quarter

The numbers are in and tech giants Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft spent a whopping $97 billion last quarter on purchases of property and equipment. That’s nearly double what it was a year earlier as AI infrastructure costs continue to balloon and show no sign of stopping. Amazon, which reported earnings and capital expenditure spending that beat analysts’ expectations yesterday, continued to lead the pack, spending more than $35 billion on capex in the quarter that ended in September.

Note that the data we’re using here is from FactSet, which strips out finance leases when calculating capital expenditures. If those expenses were included the total would be well over $100 billion last quarter.

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