I posted the following as a long comment on Assaf Arkin's blog. It was specifically in response to his blog post, but also more generally in response to the flack the W3C's been getting recently. While a lot of the critisism is justified, some people seem to be making more of it than it really deserves, and are pushing for more proprietary solutions and less reliance on W3C standards.

Since not all of the original comment is pertinent to the discussion, I edited it and adding to it as approriate. I have no idea who's going to come by my little rarely-posted-to and mundane blog to read about my (probably ill-informed) opinions, but I guess I'll find out.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional web designer, and most of my experience w/ W3C standards has been as a spectator and casual user. Although I have been frustrated with uncooperative web layouts, most of my angst gas been toward poor browser implementations.

It's nice to see Yahoo! continuing to be aggressive when it comes to new features on their site. Google's spectacular success has really pushed the other search engine/portal sites to be more competative. I wonder how long they would have lagged behind with '97 era search technology if it hadn't been for Google. Not indexing the whole page, not providing chached copies, not using links to rank importance, not using context sensitive ads... I imagine that if it hadn't been for Google they would have kept spending their dollars on television ads instead of R&D

Anyway Yahoo launched a new home page yesterday. Unfortunately I can't tell what it's like b/c they don't support my browser yet (Mozilla 1.7). But they say they'll...

"...focus on seeking and adopting new technologies, incorporating user contributions into its services and sites, and extending its reach beyond the PC."

Sounds to me like they're just following the market, not inventing anything new. Even so, it's better than being stagnant, and more content to personalize my Yahoo page with is a good thing, even if it's derivative of what other sites are already doing.