Yahoo new preview homepage on the left, old/existing on the right which currently does 180 million visits a month. As was the case when they updated the look and feel of their Groups pages, stylistically speaking it is an improvement. The tabs allow quick same page surfing of the content, which makes it a speedier experience once the page loads. However the old page 15.27K vs. new 23.57K is a 54% increase in overall page size. Not to be noticed by the broadband folks, but a slight slowdown for dialup users.

Also, instead of two ads on the first load, there’s a bigger one on the right.

Richard at Read/Write Web has more and bigger pictures, plus an exclusive podcast (17:32) with Chief Product Officer Ash Patel and Vice President of Front Doors Tapan Bhat. VP of Front Doors? O … k.

Stats mentioned in the podcast: on a daily basis Yahoo “crunches through” some 20 TB of data and has some 500 million users.

When Richard asked how long before the new homepage replaces the old/exising? The answer: when they are ready.

As popular as the old/existing Yahoo homepage is, I might visit a couple times a quarter, maybe. Will you be compelled to visit the new Yahoo homepage more than the old? I don’t see a whole lot of use in these portal pages when I can get most of the same information in my RSS aggregator. Weather? I can look out the window. More useful would be some sort of 3 or 5 day forecast. Sports? I still have to click to get the scores, use my.yahoo or the current option of choice: use a Yahoo widget.

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