Yahoo! Challenges AOL
As a Portal to the Web

THERE'S A REASON for the massive success of America Online, which has attracted more than 11 million members and created the only household brand name in cyberspace, despite a series of service and legal problems.

AOL has made it easy for average, nontechnical people to use its service as a portal, or home base, for the entire on-line world. That includes AOL's proprietary content and the much greater content on the World Wide Web.

With a ubiquitous AOL disk, even novices can be up and running on-line in five or ten minutes. Once there, AOL provides simple, easy-to-use e-mail and chat services, plus a clear, clean organization by topic. This simplicity has won it the allegiance of most of the home users making their first plunge on-line, and most have stuck with it despite the scorn of the techno-elite. Even a recent price increase, to $21.95 a month from $19.95, doesn't seem to have sparked mass defections, at least so far.

But now there's a new scramble to challenge AOL as the consumers' portal of choice. Microsoft, which failed to unseat AOL with its Microsoft Network, has a new Web-based portal service in the works. Netscape is trying to turn its boring home page into an AOL-like on-line service. And CNET, a hot on-line news site, has launched a portal service called Snap that is being distributed by some Internet access providers.

But I think the challenger with the best chances may be another company with a brand name almost as familiar on-line as AOL's: Yahoo!, the venerable Internet search and directory service.

Over the past year or so, Yahoo has quietly added a surprisingly deep and varied collection of content and services to its core search function. They range from financial information and services, to customizable TV listings, maps, on-line phone books, e-mail, chat rooms and more. All of this is aimed at Yahoo's core audience-people already on the Net.

YAHOO IS taking another major step this week in its portal strategy. It has teamed up with MCI to go after AOL's target customers: people who aren't on-line at home yet. The two companies are offering a disk that provides both Internet access and content, just like AOL. Members of the service, called Yahoo Online, will pay just $14.95 a month for the first three months, then the price rises to $19.95, unless they sign up for MCI's long-distance phone services.

I wasn't able to test the new Yahoo Online from scratch, because the CD-ROM I received for testing was cracked, probably in shipping. But I have looked at the new service's home page, and it does a better job of organizing Yahoo's offerings into logical categories -- sports, news, health, business, etc. -- than Yahoo has done in the past.

Like AOL's opening screen, it isn't too fancy, comes up pretty quickly and concentrates on clarity. Unlike AOL, however, Yahoo lets you personalize the service somewhat. You can place on the front page your favorite stock quotes, sports scores and local weather, for example.

If you don't like the new opening screen, or don't use Yahoo via this new MCI deal, you can still use two other views of the service: the traditional search-oriented opening screen that's been around for years, or an existing customizable news-oriented page called MyYahoo!, which also lets you search.

Whichever way you enter Yahoo, however, the real surprise to many people will be how deep it has become. Instead of just referring users to other sites on the Web, Yahoo now boasts a host of its own material, some of it generated internally and some supplied by partners.

I BEGAN to realize this a few months back when I was shopping for a car. I used Yahoo to search for auto-related sites on the Web, and stumbled upon Yahoo's own automotive section, which lets you compare models based on price or specifications, and even search on-line ads for used cars.

There's also Yahoo Games, which features on-line versions of chess, checkers and backgammon, among others. Another feature, Yahoops!, is a sort of giant electronic office pool for predicting the outcome of the NCAA college basketball tournament. There's a Yahoo tax information service, a Yahoo comics page, and localized versions of Yahoo for major U.S. cities and some foreign countries. A senior citizens section offers health tips and a link to an on-line bingo site. The Yahoo finance site checks your portfolio and has loads of company press releases and business news.

Yahoo has also concentrated on adding people-to-people services, such as e-mail, a "pager" function that seeks out pals on the Web, and directories for looking up people and businesses. You can even get maps and door-to-door driving directions for trips, a service I've relied on successfully. Another favorite of mine: a button that just brings up a different random Web site every time you click on it. There are too many other Yahoo features and services to list here.

AOL has most of this, and with better graphics. Other Web sites and services have some of it. And it can still be hard to find all of the stuff offered by Yahoo, despite the recent organizational improvements. On some pages, it can even be tough just to get back to the home page, so the user interface needs work.

But Yahoo stands out as a potentially strong challenger to AOL because it is already a household name on the Web, is a friendly site that is easy to use over a slow modem, and has a critical mass of features. Yahoo is worth a closer look.