Jamal AndressYahoo President and CEO Marissa Mayer continues her sweeping changes to the site by stopping users from accessing Yahoo services with Facebook and Google IDs.
Just in time for March Madness, Yahoo will first be cutting off its very popular "Yahoo Sports Tourney Pick'em" — its fantasy college basketball service. In order to access it, users will be required to log in with a Yahoo email address.
Yahoo plans to roll out this new policy to all the services it offers, including the popular photo sharing service Flickr and the other Yahoo Sports brands, though no timetable has been released for the other services.
So why the big change? According to a statement by Yahoo, this will allow the online company to "offer the best personalized experience to everyone."
But a writer for Forbes isn't buying it, saying this move feels like "Yahoo trying to assert ownership over its customers, and encourage them not to stray to other vendors. While Mayer pushes the line of a 'more personalized Yahoo' simply disallowing third party logins doesn’t really deliver upon that."
This most recent change is one of many since Mayer took over in 2012.
Yahoo has acquired more than 30 companies, the largest being Tumblr; redesigned several of its current services like Yahoo mail; and hired former "Today Show" anchor Katie Couric to be the face of Yahoo News. (Via Tumblr / Disney / "Katie")
Unfortunately, though, these sweeping changes have yet to turn into revenue. Digital ad sales have fallen in the U.S. and abroad from 2012 to 2013, and sales were down 6 percent at the end of the fourth quarter.
But CNET cuts the new CEO some slack, writing: "To be fair, today's Yahoo is in a lot better shape than it was before hedge fund manager and former board member Daniel Loeb pushed to hire Mayer away from Google. ... [Mayer] gets to own the turnaround story. Or lack of one."
