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If you haven't set up Fool.com as your browser's default home page (go through Tools and Internet Options for that on Explorer) you might be using Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) as an Internet springboard on your home desktop. But is Yahoo! ready for the workspace?
In a bold new venture, Yahoo! has teamed up with Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HWP) to help sell corporate portals that will mesh popular software applications with an information intensive home screen.
Yes, sell. Yahoo! also plans to charge annual fees to large corporations for the service of providing everything from news headlines to stock quotes to intranet systems everywhere.
Tibco (Nasdaq: TIBX), which is 60% owned by Reuters (Nasdaq: RTRSY), developed the software and was trading higher this morning on the news. By integrating Yahoo! information alongside company software by companies like Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and data monster Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), Yahoo! is not exactly breaking new ground in the intranet portal sector. However, it might open the door for lesser Internet portals to follow suit -- crowding the market that accounted for just $200 million in sales last year.
But will companies accept paying for Yahoo! integration knowing most of the data is out there free for the taking? And, further still, will having access to company stock quotes on every corporate terminal serve as an incentive or a distraction?
The Rule Maker staple was also in the news today announcing that it is dumping Inktomi (Nasdaq: INKT) as its search engine provider in favor of Google. The Google engine provides a much deeper dig than its brethren with more than a billion URLs to peck from. Inktomi, with its shares off 18% in mid-morning trading today, will probably not be taking any calls from Yahoo!'s marketing department pushing its Corporate Yahoo! package.
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