Yahoo has never been bashful about its aspirations to become a global media company. Unlike Google, which pretends it's just a nerdy search business, Yahoo has made no bones about its plans to conquer the media world.
The company's unveiling of the "Widget Channel" today is pretty consistent with that lifelong dream.
The widgets -- small web-based apps that can run over a TV -- let users mix and mingle their internet content and TV programming. Intel developed a chip for the channel that can process both broadcast content and Web-based videos.
But if you feel like you've heard this announcement before, you're not entirely crazy -- it's a recurring theme. Back in 1999, when Yahoo acquired Broadcast.com, pundits speculated that Yahoo could eventually replace broadcast television. A 2005 Wired story, for example, predicted Yahoo would become the center of "the million-channel universe. Of course, that was before YouTube had come along . . .
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