Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) rolled out its much heralded new homepage for US users this week — now it’s Europe’s turn. Pages for the UK & Ireland and France went live on Thursday and I caught up with Yahoo Europe SVP Rich Riley and SVP for integrated consumer experiences Tahan Bhat at a launch event in London — and in this video interview the execs reveal the thinking behind the new look and why they really want to be the “centre of people’s online lives” in the UK and Europe.
— Yahoo Buzz: Yahoo is also launching its content recommendation platform Yahoo Buzz for European users, which it markets as a partly algorithm-based antidote to the easily gamed, entirely vote-based Digg. EU users will also get news content reccomended to them — the system is partly algorithm bases, depending on what users look at, but will be partly decided by users themselves via “sliders” that can choose the ratio of silly to serious stories they want, for example.
— News partnerships: Like the US site, the European versions present content via “apps”: Facebook, MySpace, Transport for London and even Yahoo Mail rival Gmail are represented in widget form, as are UK news publishers including the Financial Times, Telegraph.co.uk and Guardian News & Media. Bhat claims that being featured on Yahoo is so successful it can send too much traffic to sites — he says some have which have asked to be taken off the homepage. British publishers are obviously keen to be involved but will look on sceptically at that claim.
— MSFT deal?: The elephant in the room with any Yahoo story right now is a possible buyout offer from Miscrosoft. Has that affected these plans? Bhat said: “We build products around our users. You’ve got things happening all round the world and all kind of rumours — that’s not what we’re building products for. Users are untouched by all this.”
— Advertisers: Riley wouldn’t put an exact figure on what he hoped to make in ad revenue from the new site in the next year, but did say that it was designed with advertisers in mind: Speaking generally, Riley said the comany was “very happy with the progress of advertising in Europe and we continue to take market share in the display business”. There’s user-targeted content but — for the moment at least — no behavioural targeted ads, though Riley said the company is working with advertisers to target consumers.
— Yahoo Mail: A new version of Yahoo Mail is coming this month too, with enhanced social social aspects Director of EU communications products Dave McDowell added that the service is the UK’s second second biggest email provider — twice the size of Gmail — and the third biggest in France, growing at 40 percent a year there.

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