CES 2014: Yahoo Looks To British Innovation To Simplify Your Life

In Yahoo‘s first ever appearance at the show, the Internet giant’s CEO Marissa Meyer took to the stage to introduce a collection of new products and services, assisted by a number of celebrity guests from the world of television and music.

“Yahoo is about making the world’s daily habits inspiring and entertaining, and there are few places as inspiring and entertaining as CES,” said Mayer. “We have been hard at work re-imagining Yahoo’s core businesses across search, communications, media and video”.

Redesigning your life

Amongst Yahoo’s main announcements was the news that the company has taken over Aviate, an Android service which analyses a range of information from sources such as Wi-Fi and GPS to learn about a user’s digital habits and present them with the apps, content and alerts they need at that time.

For example, when you turn your phone on in the morning, Aviate will be able to provide you with weather updates, the latest headlines, and travel news, without being asked.

The company also announced Yahoo News Digest, an iOS app constructed using insight from Summly, the service designed by British teenager Nick D’Aloisio and sold for $30m last year.

The app provides summarised versions of the news twice a day to a user’s mobile device. Readers can scan Summly summaries of the stories or choose to read “Atoms”, units of key information such as images, videos and maps, which provide context to each story.

Mayer also introduced Yahoo Smart TV, an update to its Connected TV platform, which offers interactive viewing including personalised program recommendations from TV, video on demand, and web services. She also promised improvements to Yahoo’s advertising business which will make it easier for marketers to buy ads and to target different portions of the audience.

Yahoo passed a milestone this autumn, with more than 400 million monthly mobile users, just over half of the company’s overall 800 million total monthly users, Mayer told the audience.

According to Reuters, shares of the company went up 19 cents to finish at $41.11 following the conference, continuing a positive trend for Yahoo, which despite several recent issues has seen its value rise by more than 160 percent since Mayer took over in 2012.

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