Yahoo Still Determined to Compete: BrowserPlus Reappears

Yahoo is pulling out all the stops in its quest to either prove it can compete with the big boys like Google or at least convince Microsoft that they are worth more than the initial bid before turning themselves in for their Micro-Borgification.

Their latest move appears to be a release (or possible resurrection) of a long-rumored framework somewhat similar to Google Gears. Right on the heels of their official external launch of Fire Eagle comes Yahoo BrowserPlus, At the present time, BrowserPlus will only be used on Yahoo's own sites, but they suggest that they'll be "sharing with the world" at a later date.

As Brickhouse developer Skylar Woodward states, BrowserPlus is

"software and software distribution framework that allows device developers (desktop, mobile, etc.) to seamlessly bridge the browser programming environment (DHTML, JS) to any component they can dream up (VoIP, image manipulation, data caching, etc.)"

As Woodward notes, its release now has a great deal to do with Yahoo's rapidly shifting direction. I'm getting a vision of a bunch of little mice scurrying around trying to find their way to the pellet at the end of the maze that keeps them from the logical ending as Microhoo. It's still nice to see three years of development efforts finally seeing the light of day, however, no matter what the reason.

Of course, in somewhat related news, the WSJ thinks that the Yahoo-Google ad deal will be extended, forcing Microsoft to back out, or help Yahoo with the proposed AOL deal. Apparently, the WSJ thinks that U.S. and European regulators would turn a blind eye to the unsurpassed dominance Google would have in search ads if the deal were extended.