But what of Yahoo!? In the battle to win hearts and minds of the lucrative search engine audience is there a counter cute move which Yahoo! could wrangle?
It turns out the answer is something of a yes and something of a no. We've not yet seen a Yahoo doodle (and surely the cries of 'copycat' would be rather loud on that one) but this week Yahoo updated their companion bar. Users did not have to download any new software, it was a sly, subtle but effective change made in the background. If you're not logged into your Yahoo account (and sometimes you are mysteriously logged out) your Yahoo companion bar will be proudly sporting the Olympic flame.
It's an effective tactic. Most people would press an idle red button just to see what it did and many more people will press an Internet button newly found on their trusted companion bar. Riding the interest in this year's Olympics is clearly in Yahoo's interest, the event in Greece is being watched by millions and already being covered by Yahoo's sports portal. There's no better time to remind the Internet that Yahoo is a massive global portal.
