14 DAY TRIAL // Have a look at this site. This is the new beta for the upcoming design of the famous AOL. Now visit Yahoo's homepage. Please tell me the differences. None? Shocking or disgusting? You choose. However, the AOL homepage is a perfect copy of the current Yahoo layout with exactly the same elements. The button, the menu, the images, the entire layout, everything is copied. Except for the logo and the search engine that is currently provided by Google. Oh, and even the search button that is exactly the same as the one published by Yahoo. AOL's senior product manager posted a message on his blog to present the new version of the homepage and invite users to the beta stage. Contrary to his expectations, all the blog readers were shocked by the similarities with the Yahoo homepage and posted comments to express their feelings. "Your new US portal beta is a blatant rip-off of Yahoo!'s home page. What gives?" a user asked.
The AOL employee refused to comment on the similarities, sustaining that he likes the new layout and it is very possible to see it online soon. It seems like the company already published the design for AOL India but made a little change: the left side menu is integrated into the layout of the page but the similarities with the Yahoo homepage are more than obvious.
"I think there may be some confusion about my role at AOL. While I am a senior product manager at AOL, I did not work on the new AOL portal at all so I cannot really comment on the redesign other than to say what I have already stated in the post above. I like the new AOL portal," Frank Grubel, the AOL senior product manager, replied to the accusations.
In the past, Google was involved in a similar case, but it reacted quickly and modified the page. As you know, the two Internet giants Google and Yahoo tried to implement their products in Internet Explorer 7 and release optimized versions of the applications. The only thing that caught our attention was the similarity between Google IE7's page and Yahoo's website that were almost the same but with a different logo.
