I noticed a few hours ago that my normal Yahoo mail screen (the first thing I see at mail.yahoo.com after logging in) now lists a handful of “Top Stories” or “World” or my choice of one out of a few news categories.
I know they’re just catching up with the whole Google Fusion thing (which I’m not using – I use a Google Toolbar for Firefox and never visit the/my Google home page), but it still seems like a good idea.
With the Google version, I can check my Gmail from my Google home page with news and perhaps RSS feeds in the future. But this Yahoo thing is nailed to my email – so that I don’t have to look for anything, I don’t have to even go to a portal (like my.yahoo.com, which I *do* use to scan headlines and read a few comics after I’ve checked my mail in the morning) to get a bit of news.
Why does this matter? Think of all the people who normally have no interest in reading the news online who might get sucked into a story now via a headline they see while checking mail. Is this idea circa AOL 3.0? Heh, maybe so, but I still like it – I check my email more often than Google News during the day, so it works for me.