Yahoo has tried a lot of promotional ideas over the years (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

OLD DOG, NEW TRICKS

Yahoo is still one of the most visited websites on the planet

Now the internet OG is introducing new features to help users tackle inbox overload. Yes, AI is in the first sentence of the press release.

David Crowther

6/13/25 7:45AM

Internet brands don’t tend to live very long.

Myspace, Vine, Flickr, BuzzFeed, Napster, Bebo, Vice, Tumblr, and many more have exploded onto the scene before either fading into obsolescence, obscurity, or imploding altogether — and those are just a few of the ones you’ve heard of. Thousands more never made it beyond a domain registration and a traffic-less website.

It’s remarkable, then, that Yahoo — one of the earliest mainstream internet brands — is still alive and kicking at the ripe old age of 31, with the private-equity-owned brand this week announcing a new “catch up” feature to its email service, Yahoo Mail.

In terms of features, it’s not exactly revolutionary stuff: AI-powered summaries of your emails that give you the option to delete or keep the messages hardly represent an innovative breakthrough in digital communications. Even the marketing, which includes a collaboration with a streetwear brand to create a range of “Anti Email Email Club” tees and sweatshirts, feels very 2010s.

But, for all the criticisms you could throw at an internet dinosaur like Yahoo, it’s hard to deny its continued longevity. Its email service reportedly still has over 200 million users, and data from Similarweb finds that Yahoo.com is still the sixth-most-visited website in America.

Racking up an average of more than 1.6 billion page views from March to May, Yahoo is pulling in more site visits than ChatGPT, Wikipedia, X, LinkedIn, The New York Times, ESPN, and many other household names.

Interestingly, though, we’ve started to notice a small decline in Yahoo’s traffic, per Similarweb data. The site notched 351 million visits in the week ending May 23. That was the lowest since at least April 2024, down 13% on the average weekly figure of the past 12 months. Can Yahoo still be relevant at 40 years old? What about when it hits half a century? Only time will tell.

Related reading: ChatGPT is soaring up this leaderboard — last month Americans visited the website of the AI chatbot more than Wikipedia.

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Tech CEOs have been nuttier than ever.

Rani Molla10h

Rani Molla11h

Trump AI executive order is a “major win” for Open AI, Google, Microsoft, and Meta, says Ives

President Trump’s new executive order aiming to keep states from enacting AI laws that inhibit US “global AI dominance” is a “major win” for OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Meta, according to Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives. Big Tech companies have collectively plowed hundreds of billions into the technology, while seeing massive stock price gains, and Ives believes they stand to gain much more.

“Given that there have been over 1,000 AI laws proposed at the state level, this was a necessary move by the Trump Administration to keep the US out in front for the AI Revolution over China,” Ives wrote, adding that state-by-state regulation “would have crushed US AI startup culture.” The presidential order would withhold federal funds from states that put in place onerous AI regulations.

This morning, Whitehouse AI adviser Sriram Krishnan said in a CNBC interview that he’d be working with Congress on a single national framework for AI.

Despite Ives’ rosy read-through on the order, with the exception of Nvidia, which jumped on a report of boosted Chinese demand, many AI stocks are in the red early today. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF is down nearly 1% premarket, as the AI trade struggles thanks to underwhelming earnings results from Oracle earlier this week.

Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence

This morning, Whitehouse AI adviser Sriram Krishnan said in a CNBC interview that he’d be working with Congress on a single national framework for AI.

Rani Molla12/11/25

Epic scores two victories as “Fortnite” returns to Google Play and appeals court keeps injunction against Apple

“Fortnite” maker Epic Games notched two wins Thursday in its drawn-out battle against Big Tech’s app stores. “Fortnite” returned to the Google Play app store in the US, Reuters reports, as Epic continues working with Google to secure court approval for their settlement.

Meanwhile, a US appeals court partly reversed sanctions against Apple in Epic’s antitrust case, calling parts of the order overly broad, but upheld the contempt finding and left a sweeping injunction in place — keeping pressure on Apple to allow developers to steer users to outside payment options and reduce its tight control over how apps can communicate and monetize on iOS.

So many reasons to drop in this month... and now we're on Google Play in the U.S. too!

Android: https://t.co/Z6pkYqYsRI
iPhone: https://t.co/JNpTVneGMN
PC: https://t.co/CPsjp3XNdo pic.twitter.com/TV9b1ZlqfJ
— Fortnite (@Fortnite) December 11, 2025

Jon Keegan12/11/25

Report: AI-powered toys tell kids where to find matches, parrot Chinese government propaganda

You may want to think twice before buying your kids a fancy AI-powered plush toy.

A new report from NBC News found that several AI-powered kids toys could easily be steered to dangerous as well as sexually explicit conversations in a shocking demonstration of the loose safety guardrails in this novel category of consumer electronics.

A report out by the Public Interest Research Group details what researchers found when they tested five AI-powered toys for kids bought from Amazon. Some of the toys offered instructions on where to find matches and how to start fires.

NBC News also bought some of these toys and found they parroted Chinese government propaganda and gave instructions for how to sharpen knives. Some of the toys also discussed inappropriate topics for kids, like sexual kinks.

The category of AI-powered kids toys is under scrutiny as major AI companies like OpenAI have announced partnerships with toy manufacturers like Mattel (which has yet to release an AI-powered toy).

AI toys for kids talk about sex and issue Chinese Communist Party talking points, tests show

The category of AI-powered kids toys is under scrutiny as major AI companies like OpenAI have announced partnerships with toy manufacturers like Mattel (which has yet to release an AI-powered toy).

Jon Keegan12/11/25

OpenAI releases GPT-5.2, the “best model yet for real-world, professional use”

After feeling the heat from Google’s recent launch of its powerful Gemini 3 model, OpenAI’s response to its “code red” has been released, reportedly on an accelerated schedule to keep up with the competition.

The company’s new flagship model, GPT-5.2, is out, and the company is calling it “the most capable model series yet for professional knowledge work.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called it the “smartest generally-available model in the world” and shared benchmarks that showed it achieving higher scores than Gemini 3 Pro and Anthopic’s Claude Opus 4.5 in some software engineering tests and abstract reasoning, math, and science problems.

In a press release announcing the new model, the company said: “Overall, GPT‑5.2 brings significant improvements in general intelligence, long-context understanding, agentic tool-calling, and vision — making it better at executing complex, real-world tasks end-to-end than any previous model.”