AOL has started beta testing a new home page (the main AOL.com portal). AOL Senior Product Manager (and occasional TechCrunch contributor) Frank Gruber introduced it on his personal blog earlier today, although he is not the product manager for the product.
Nice portal…but it is nearly identical to Yahoo home page, which was redesigned last year. Click on the image above for a larger view. Internally, I’m hearing AOLers refer to the new portal as “the Yahoo Portal” although its official name is AOL 3.0.
Internet companies like to copy things from their competitors that work, but as we’ve seen even the largest companies sometimes get caught copying a little too much.
AOL says they are building best of breed products, not simply copying things from Google, Yahoo and others that are proven to work and porting them to its less cutting-edge audience. In the past year, though, we’ve seen them largely copy digg and then release a new mail product that would have been awesome two years ago but which stacks up poorly to the current versions of Gmail and Yahoo Mail.
David Liu, Senior Vice President of Portals & Personal Media at AOL, has told me that a number of new products in development are going to be impressive. I’ve seen early demos and wireframes of some of them, and I think he’s right. The company needs a category killer to get some street cred.
Designers are Copycats ????
I don´t think they will release this design. Maybe they are using it to bechmark it against other designs in focus groups.
As an ex-yahoo! designer involved in the previous redesign I´ll fell proud if it happen, anyway.
Maybe one day all sites will look the same
Did anyone see the aol.com portal before Yahoo changed it a year ago? No. Because if you did then you wouldn’t say that AOL copied Yahoo, but the other way around. The AOL Welcome screen is known for the scrolling tab window, funny how Yahoo got one when they switched things up? AOL.com was released Summer ‘05, Yahoo changed last year…Yahoo was is the copying game first it seems
This just shows the importance of being first to market. Aol may have designed first, tested longer, and been more radical in departure for them, but if Y! beats them out the door (even if it is a copy of AOL) Yahoo will get the credit. As product managers know, that sucks but it’s life in the big city. What is really inexcusable is that once Yahoo launched, even if they STOLE the design from a laptop of an AoL employee, AOL didn’t accept defeat in getting to market first and then do more to differentiate. First to design, first to test, first to show to a few bloggers, is not the point. First to market is, if you want to build a brand on the basis of innovation. So maybe AOL’s designers are the best, but AOL product managers and execs should be fired!
Yahoo! didn’t copied that design from AOL.
Maybe AOL is following the recent design trend of web 2.0 start-ups … design your site like the company you want to buy you.
Is the irony lost on everyone?
People complained that “the AOL.com portal’s design would be so much better if it were more like Yahoo’s” and now that they’ve done it, people aren’t saying “well done, AOL, your portal design doesn’t suck as bad as it used to” … instead they’re saying “boy, why does your design look so much like Yahoo’s?”
I think the new design is a far cry better than it was … and yes, it looks remarkably Yahoo-like. Remember: it can only get better from here.
Here is the deal - we are not average users - we notice things like this.
- My dad or anyone older than me that doesnt spend more than 2 hours a day on a PC - wouldn’t have noticed.
- I suggest they did research; found what Yahoo Found… then instead of designing better than yahoo! - they just copied it.
- I feel sorry for the AOl designers, they probably had something new and exciting then “the man” said -
” Lets just go with something like… uh … Yahoo…..”
I have to come to the defense of designers here. This design decision was most likely made by a product or marketing manager under the guidance of a VP or CEO. Ninety percent of designers I know would be embarassed to put out a clone. We constantly want to push the limits of design, which, admittedly, can sometimes lead to poor usability. Nothing’s more uninteresting than rehashing someone else’s work.
With AOL being in the position they’re in, converting to the new business model, a lot of the upper management folk are probably very afraid of making a bad decision. I can imagine when the redesign proposal started floating around, management had a “look like Yahoo” drumbeat going. Why? Because if you redesign to look like someone who is successful and your site fails, you can say, “hey, it worked for Yahoo, so it clearly wasn’t a bad decision.” Scapegoat Avoidance 101.
Who the hell uses AOL anyways?!
AOL’s simple and effective product “dashboard” concept has stood the test of time. Copied by both MSN and more recently Yahoo. The rest is much of a muchness.
I found another Big brand is doing the same. Hindustan Times is the leading news paper in India & their home page is similar to New York times home page. (As we all know that New York time is designed by Razor Fish, its an award winning website)
Look at this URL:
http://www.suggestusability.co.....times.html
Is it at all possible that there is a partnership in place here and it literally is a re-skin of Yahoo’s portal?
……….even down to advertisers. Not only is the Scottrade advertisement identical it’s placed on the same spot on the page!
Ryan is absolutely right. There is some real talented UI and designers at AOL, but their work gets hammered down by product managers and executives who are too afraid to do anything new. Last year there was some great innovative work and prototypes produced for the new AOL.com that was put into testing and tested very positively. The new CEO and his right hand man, Mr Grant came in and shit on everything. The executive drumbeat was “Make it look like Yahoo”.
AOL will never be able to innovate and become a industry front runner with the type of leadership that runs the company. It will continue to follow and copy everyone else.
What is this “AOL”?
Everyone is doing it, why not AOL? Will it work? Depends on whos using AOL now days.
These comments aren’t about AOL specifically - they apply almost everywhere…
Too much benchmarking
Too much hiring competitor employees because of “experience”
Not enough hiring smart, innovative people creating new and different solutions without limiting beliefs of what is possible.
If AOL doesn’t start taking risks, it will die a slow, painful, large, corporate death.
Nicole’s comment is correct. AOL launched a brand new design in 2005 and quite a bit later Yahoo came out with a homepage that looked copied from AOL’s. Didn’t see many complaints back then.
for the love of God and all that is mighty. what in God’s name is AOL doing? more so, the designers on this project… where is thy shame my user experience/design brothers?
Please don’t answer.
This screams “DESIGN BY EXECUTIVES!”
Kudos to the poor designers how had to put up with it…
What-evah. Microsoft hasn’t come up with an original product since the days of DOS, Basic and Office. Ever since, they have been copying Apple, Netscape, AOL (where do you think they got the IM idea from?), Google and Sony just to name a few.
Well, to let you all in on the secret: it WAS execu-design, from the very top. You think any designer would do this of their own free will? The designers and UI folks here at AOL are some of the most intelligent, creative and passionate people I know. They had no choice in this matter.
I assume there is a reason for the “copy Yahoo” directive, but I am in the dark.
According to the article, “Frank Gruber introduced it on his personal blog earlier today, although he is not the product manager for the product.” Remember that as you read the article and his blog. Don’t shoot the messenger.
I can smell exec suits all over this.
kinda like ask.com copying google.
To everyone that is quick to write something about AOL copying Yahoo, don’t forget about the big picture here. Aside from how this page looks, there’s much more at play than meets the eye. I’m startled at how many people are zeroing in on design and UI decisions and not what’s in the minds of the real decision makers outside of design team. That’s the meat of this story. A challenge for someone that works on the inside, what’s really going on here?
Apparently there is more to the story, according to Sagastin, and things we will never know regarding the design and the design team. Maybe yahoo and aol are working together on this. Do you know that they are not? No, you don’t.
Apparently AOL Canada has already launched the new website ahead of AOL.com.
http://www.aol.ca
FIRE RON GRANT NOW!
The new yahoo-like version was mandated by Ron Grant the new head of AOL. He told them to just rip it off and move on to the next project. At least he has the balls to make an executive decision. And his decision isn’t all that bad since the Yahoo home page works well. If you can’t compete, then copy and focus your energies elsewhere, where you can compete.
Michael,
Compare the homepage of MSN, myspace with yahoo & AOL, i see almost the same kind of layout, is it due to the fact users are pretty much used to this kind of layout?!
Then: AOL=Another Opportunity Lost
Now: AOL=Anti-Original Layouts
Please don’t blame the AOL designers. They’re really good people who are getting really bad direction. The people who blamed AOL executives in general and Ron Grant in particular were right - this was a decision forced upon the people doing the work at AOL, and we’re incredibly embarrassed by it.
I too must speak in defense of the designers of the AOL “Yahoo” portal. Ryan and Sam have it perfectly correct; it was a newly assigned executive who, in the late stages of a rather innovative and fresh portal design, entered the picture and decreed that it must “look like Yahoo.” Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of design, R&D, testing and prototyping money was pissed away with a single imperious sweep of the hand.
Mortifying. Utterly mortifying.
If I was a hard-working designer @ AOL..I’d just be embarrassed beyond belief. The front page is your “face” to your customers…and your company just copied someone else’s work.
Yahoo!, on the other hand, should feel flattered. Are they getting a license fee?
PS- you know, it’s REAL easy to make YOUR very own AOL page.
Just go to http://www.yahoo.com, and right click to ‘view source.’
Just replace the logo top left—you’re good to go.
All the commenters who smelled Execudesign are perceptive. All the finger pointing morons who yell “oh my god what crapola designers, they copy and paste ha ha” have the intellect of 14 year olds or your below average Digg user. Come on now. If you’ve worked in Design at larger companies, you must know that the design challenge isn’t thinking of innovative ideas or good UI. The real design challenge is persuasion - percolating up the value of innovation, user experience and capital D designing the decision making processes of the organization. If anything, this shows the AOL design team failed at this larger challenge, but so do most design teams at Yahoo, Google and MSN.
I’ve sat and processed this a bit and I believe there is more to this story, as I have a bit of inside information on something related. I won’t say any more than that, but I believe there was a very specific purpose behind AOL’s choice of execu-design.
Ryan is correct in saying that there was a very specific purpose behind the execu-design. Unfortunately, it’s wholly without mystery or intrigue. The direction from the AOL President was clear, and was obviously met with protestations from the design and product teams: don’t suggest Yahoo in the design — MAKE IT LOOK JUST LIKE YAHOO. It’s a UI that people are comfortable with, and copying it in the short-term mitigates risk despite the message it sends to those in the industry. The mantra is “execute on the basics, and earn the right to innovate”. It goes without saying that it’s a risky if not dubious strategy, and that it was devastating to the designers and many of the product managers who had a design in hand that was created from the ground up to “take on Yahoo”, not copy them.
While there’s something to be said for a strategy of “executing on the basics”, particularly when we’re talking about a company as adrift as AOL, it can’t be done successfully without more sensitivity to the impacts it will have both internally and in the minds of consumers. By mandating the *design*, Ron Grant (probably unknowingly) devastated the morale of a team that is of critical tactical importance to the company. While this team is at the epicenter, the shockwaves inherent in the action, and in the “we’re not in the innovation business” credo, began engulfing the AOL campus last week.
It also may be a miscalculation on Grant’s part that audiences “won’t care” that AOL goes out of its way to deliberately and unapologetically mimic its closest competitor. If GM came out with a car that looked exactly like a Toyota Prius, wouldn’t they be perceived *by consumers* as uninspired frauds, peddling counterfeits?
Long term consequences aside, this episode is an expression of astonishing timidity and loss of ambition. Indeed, it will be a long, slow, bleed into cultural and market obscurity. These are just the insignificant signs of AOL in its twilight, nothing more.
David, you sound like a corporate stooge. You’re actually defending the decision to steal intellectual property and creative work? So, forgeries are OK too? No one will notice, right? That’s not having balls. Having balls is creating a new, innovative product that will inspire and lead.
Focus your energies on competing? Competing means building the better product. AOL hasn’t done that. They built a 10-month old competitor’s product, which, in the eyes of consumers and advertisers isn’t competitive, it’s a cop-out and an embarassment that will take years to live down.
AOL “leadership” continues to demoralize its already demoralized creative staff. As if not having creative leadership wasn’t enough, they continue to focus all of their energies on hackneyed technical products with half-hearted user experiences and visual design. Execu-butchery at it’s worst.
What happened to creativity?
I think other readers have said it and I agree, we are conditioned to read web pages in a certain way and the big boys are all doing what they can to capitalize on this. I rarely visit any of these sites as I get my news via rss for the most part and use the search bar in Firefox to conduct pretty much any search I need to make so no need to visit Yahoo, AOL, MSN or the others. AOL is dying a slow death…in my opinion.
Hey
AOL behind Yahoo and copying? No wonder. Both are managed by Indian Software Engineers. As a country, we are specialists in copying and copyright is a birthright. We copy from Engish to Hindi movie to Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and so many other language movies time and again.
So What’s big deal in AOL copying Yahoo………….
Afterall, its Indian expertise in different formats
I like AOLs design more, its clearer, simpler & somewhat and easier readable.
E.g. the tabs “News / Finance / Entertainment / Video” cover much more diverse interest, than Yahoos tabs “News / World / Local / Video”.
Management decisions are always ugly and sometimes only sexy, so the AOL developers have still done a good job.
So we will have some kind of ISO standard for pages ?
It is funny how 98% of the people here are bashing AOL for copying Yahoo!. There have been at least 2 other posts that point this out but since it seems that when someone new posts they haven’t read the entire thread.
9 months ago aol.com was launched as a portal. The design was nothing like Yahoos!. A few months later Yahoo! launches their new portal. The design is very similar (some would say that they copied the design) to the aol.com design. Then Yahoo! launches are revised version of their portal (rev 2). When aol.com launches the rev 2 of their portal everyone screams AOL COPIED YAHOO!.
As a previous poster it is just a natural progression of the website that aol.com launched first.
The second point is that most of you obviously have no training in user interfaces. There is a reason that most sites use a top nav for relevant links, tabs for multiples instances of similar data etc. It is what we are users are conditioned to use. If the top nav was on the bottom (below the fold) and instead of tabs it was just a bunch of drop-downs, the user experience would suck. Look up Jakob Nielsen on the web for more information on consistent user design.
AOL bashing for bashings sake is just juvenile. And really, how many of you use the Yahoo! portal?
So, you condone stealing then? Besides, the elements Yahoo “borrowed” from AOL last round was minimal at best. This is pixel for pixel duplication! Your defensive posture reaks of being on “the team.” If 98% of the people are bashing, something’s wrong with the picture, no?
You call AOL ripping a 10-month old portal progression? I hope you aren’t in any form of business that has a bottom line. That’s counter-competetive and anti-creative. And in the eyes of advertisers and consumers, a failure to push the medium forward. Essentially the polar opposite of progression.
Some of us posting here are likely to be creatives responding in protest, so your UE argument is without base. I personally have over a decade in UI and just because there are best practices doesn’t mean there isn’t room for innovation. If we all copied each other, there would be NO progression, ever.
Nielsen is a idiot. He thinks everything should look like Craigslist. He’s knocked progressive technologies that have become the standard; Flash, AJAX, etc.
People aren’t bashing AOL here. They’re bashing a poor execu-decision, one that will cost them in morale, reputation and perhaps even financially.