Looks like Yahoo is making a grab at the market. This week the company launched a redesign that leaves some of us thinking: they're going to have to try a bit harder.

 The launch comes along with a re-branding with the slogan "It's Y!ou" Be on the look out for billboards, tv commercials, and print and online ads with catchy bits like "The internet has a new personality, yours."

As the branding suggests, the site relaunch tries to focus on personalizing the Yahoo experience for its users, but does it succeed? My first impression was that the main page looks strikingly similar to iGoogle. A left justified menu bar contains quick, customizable links to sites such as Facebook and weather. A local news box picked up on my local and brought me the latest on the Boston Mayoral race. 

One difference to iGoogle, however, is the glaring ad that takes up a big chunk of one column. And now that Google has added new social gadgets, Yahoo site appears to be a less sexy version of what iGoogle was four years ago. I've grabbed screen shots of the new Yahoo, and my iGoogle page so you can compare. Also, the search capabilities are still lacking as well. Where is the boost we all expected from the Bing agreement?

So next, I am going to ask the same question to Yahoo execs that I asked AOL when it began to stretch its legs back in July... Can Yahoo really be revived? The site has been consistently losing users, and while the ship may be sinking very slowly, it seems as though it is sinking nonetheless.

Not so, cries new CEO  Carol Bartz who is using an argument that's unnervingly close to the real Americans line in the 2008 election. "When you get out of New York City and Silicon Valley, everybody else loves Yahoo," said Bartz reported the Times.

Only time will tell if everybody else really does love Yahoo. One PCMag reader and Yahoo devotee doesn't appear to be wooed by the redesign. His words of advice for Yahoo? "Google has it 110 percent right. Following the age old, sage, engineering wisdom of: "KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID."