Yahoo Inc unveiled a shopping site for gadgets laced with plain-English advice by experts and user-contributed reviews, entering a market long dominated by tech-focused media firm CNet Networks Inc.
Yahoo! Tech (http://tech.yahoo.com), as the new Yahoo property is known, marks the latest move by the world's biggest Internet media company to reinvigorate or expand into areas such as travel, finance, automobiles, and now technology.
Yahoo! Tech is set to offer hundreds of thousands of products with user product ratings and reviews through its Yahoo Shopping site, as well as question-and-answer guides and community features that exist within the wider Yahoo realm.
The site aims to set itself apart from jargon-filled gadget enthusiast sites by focusing on how to make technology easier to understand, the executive-in-charge said.
"What we are trying to do is to make it simple to choose and use the technology that is easiest to use," said Patrick Houston, general manager of Yahoo! Tech, a veteran journalist who, until a year ago was editor in chief of CNet.
"We built Yahoo! Tech for people who might not have the time nor inclination to learn about bits and bytes," he said.
The advice site draws heavily upon familiar Yahoo tools to help users search for and share information about prices and features with friends or family or other consumers.
It is designed to serve as the anchor across the Internet media giant's network of sites for technology advertising, a lucrative category that is among the most popular online markets for advertisers.