Yahoo! is still there but it is admittedly a lot less fun these days to write about. Long gone are the days of lady longshoreman wannabes like Carol Bartz (who boatloads of fun to write about) or the resume challenged antics of Scott Thompson.

No today Yahoo! is settled down into a company that is looking to bring itself back to some semblance of its former self under the seemingly stable guidance of its current CEO, ex-Googler Marissa Mayer. Part of the return to its sense includes a new look that is being rolled out today.

It’s important stuff since Mayer herself published a post to the Yahoo Corporate blog in which she says the following:

Ok so it’s not really a piece of Internet marketing news. It’s more a point of interest. Even with the oodles of cash we make here at Marketing Pilgrim, that price is a bit too rich (I finished that sentence with a straight face then burst out laughing followed by a brief period of sobbing but it’s all better now, thanks).

So what about the price (which was $802 at the time of this writing)? Well it’s a good sign that Larry Page is well respected amongst the types of people that determine how rich people get richer. More importantly though is this that comes from an Associated Press story from MercuryNews.com on the stock

I am originally from New Jersey and I have much of my family and many friends in the NY/NJ area. When I go ‘home’ (if I am not driving) I have a few options for airports but it’s never easy to see if it’s worth flying into LaGuardia v. Newark for a particular trip. It’s a hassle to check flights to each airport separately.

Google sees that in some areas like the New York region it makes sense to give regional flight information rather than just per airport so they are doing just that. Here’s a screenshot I took of a search result.

Google is all about being beautiful these days. In the earnings call talk that Larry Page gave to analysts and investors on Tuesday he said the following:

We’ve talked a lot about excellence and velocity over the last year. While many claim it’s my nature never to be satisfied, we’ve actually made real progress creating more beautiful and more intuitive products.

Well it looks like that message is now a Google mantra. Here is how Associate Product Manager, Hongy Li, describes the new Google image search in a post at the Webmaster Central blog.

People looking for images on Google often want to browse through many images, looking both at the images and their metadata (detailed information about the images). Based on feedback from both users and webmasters, we redesigned Google Images to provide a better search experience. In the next few days, you’ll see image results displayed in an inline panel so it’s faster, more beautiful, and more reliable.