First of all, it is actually a major boost in organization and clean design. The options on the left have been reduced to a smaller and easier-to-read list. The center feed is evenly paced and better at snagging your interest while casually scrolling through. The right has been turned into a set of info widgets-- weather, stock quotes, sport scores, some appealing photos and videos if you're just clickin around, coming birthdays if you're hooked up to FB, and horoscopes. If I'm thinking about a modern newspaper, that's about it.

I'm not a huge fan of the aesthetic, but it's familiar to its userbase, and almost entirely uncomplicated. I think Yahoo should call it a win.

Exactly how I feel. I stopped going there, I stopped checking my email there in years. It is a site used by grandparents. Even my mom in her 60 uses google (gmail, google news, search). A lot maybe has to do with yahoo.com just being there first and those that got computers back then just never switched (kind of like people still paying for AOL dialup).

And even though many criticize it for being dull it is exactly familiar and doing something crazy and outlandish would have driven away their remaining user base.

Now there also an aspect that yahoo has a better audience for certain ads, they also might be receptive to ads in general. So in that regard Yahoo can keep staying afloat. But in the long run I am not sure how they'll attract new users.

Come to think of it, Yahoo is like the Buick of web industry. The only people I see buying and driving those are elderly folk. When they can't drive there is a risk the brand will just go away.

She only took over about 6 months ago, properly redesigning something like the Yahoo home page is likely a year long process. I have no doubt that this is a temporary step to get a little bit of forward momentum for what has been perceived as a stagnant company.