• Silicon Alley Insider, Monday, June 2, 2008 11 AM

Silicon Alley Insider's Hank Williams calls Yahoo's BrowserPlus "the plug-in to end all plug-ins" because once it's installed, you can add new plug-ins as needed without needing to restart your browser. Currently, you have to close and restart your Web browser for new plug-ins to take effect. And while it may not be a serious pain, Williams points out that installing plug-ins "is enough of a speed bump that, outside (of Adobe's) Flash Player, getting people to install them is fairly hard."

Here's how it works: when a BrowserPlus feature is ready to be installed, a dialog box pops up asking you if it's okay to install it. When you say yes, the feature is automatically accessible on the Web site you're viewing. Currently BrowserPlus is only compatible with Yahoo sites (that will change), but Williams touts its built-in functionality, like dragging and dropping items to the desktop, a language interpreter and a cool text-to-speech feature.

The dynamic plug-in concept is important because it means that users will no longer have to wait for the next version of a browser to be able to add new features. If adopted on a wide scale, BrowserPlus could really be a game changer for Yahoo, Williams said, because it would put Yahoo at the center of the new Web instead of being just a popular Web site. "The strategic implications of this cannot be understated, and could fundamentally change the 'who are we as a company' question currently looming over the company," he said.

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