Yahoo! Making Like Google

Yahoo! is providing selected users a glimpse of the proposed design as part of its market research. The company declined to release screen shots of the new look it is contemplating, though images are available on the Internetnews site and other places on the Web.

"Part of this process includes ongoing efforts to provide an even more relevant experience by continuously building upon Yahoo!'s strengths in content, community, personalization and search," says Meagan Busath, a company spokeswoman, in an email.

Most Wall Street analysts encourage investors to buy shares of Yahoo!, which are down 23% this year, figuring that the same trends that are helping Google will also help Yahoo! to a lesser extent. But Google shares have lost almost as much, dropping 18% after a fourth-quarter earnings miss and a series of investor-relations gaffes.