• Reuters, Friday, September 19, 2008 11:15 AM

Under fire for under-performing, Yahoo is making all kinds of wholesale changes. Among them is a radical redesign of its homepage -- which Reuters points out is the most heavily trafficked site on the Web -- a move that will give users more control. Yahoo is looking to make good on its promise to turn its "more or less insular properties" into "starting points" that help users take advantage of the greater Web.

"We are going to put what matters to you most at your fingertips," said Tapan Bhat, the senior vice president in charge of "front doors" -- the main destinations at Yahoo, including Yahoo.com, MyYahoo and the Yahoo toolbar, told Reuters. In all, Bhat said the Yahoo homepage attracts about 100 million U.S. users per month and 300 million worldwide.

The idea is to blend elements of the traditional Yahoo.com home page with those long offered on the company's MyYahoo service. The new home page features tabs that highlight users' 10 to 20 favorite sites in addition to personalization technology that alerts users when new information arrives on their favorite sites and services, including Google products like Gmail. Instead of sending users to those sites, the new Yahoo.com features snippets of these sites at the homepage.

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