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Yahoo Acquires 'Widget' Company

Posted on: Monday, 25 July 2005, 15:00 CDT

Jul. 25--Seeking a stronger presence on computers and other devices, Yahoo has acquired a Palo Alto company that enables users to run little programs called "widgets" on their desktops that can do anything from monitoring stock quotes and lottery results to displaying random poetry passages.

Yahoo completed the acquisition of Pixoria last Tuesday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

A four-person company started in 2002, Pixoria makes and sells a small JavaScript engine called Konfabulator. Once it's installed on either Windows or Mac computers, users can place one or more of the widgets on their desktops.

Yahoo will begin making Konfabulator available for free starting today, through the Konfabulator site (www.konfabulator.com). It will come bundled with widgets that allow users to directly access Yahoo services such as weather, finance, Web search and photo sharing.

"We're looking for ways to make it easier to build things on top of Yahoo," said Toni Schneider, vice president of the Yahoo Developer Network. "It allows us to make our underlying platform more accessible."

Widgets are becoming an increasingly popular way for computer users to quickly perform simple tasks or access Internet content such as online dictionaries or TV schedules without having to use a Web browser.

Apple Computer significantly boosted the popularity of widgets earlier this year by making them a feature of its new Tiger operating system.

Adding to their allure is the fact that widgets are relatively easy for tech-savvy individuals to create. Konfabulator has more than a thousand widgets in its gallery, the vast majority contributed by users.

Yahoo said it will encourage developers to continue to create widgets that use the Konfabulator software, regardless of whether they hook into Yahoo services.

For Yahoo, widgets provide a new way for the Internet giant to push its content out to users.

"It's really an exciting new distribution channel for Yahoo," Schneider said.

Additionally, widgets will make it easier to access some Yahoo services, said Arlo Rose, one of the founders of Pixoria.

Rose said his team is also looking beyond the desktop computer and foresees making versions of the software for TiVo boxes, mobile phones and other devices.

Although the widgets could theoretically allow Yahoo to display advertising on computer desktops, Rose said "that is something I'm particularly opposed to."

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Copyright (c) 2005, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: San Jose Mercury News

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