Sounds really smart to me: get tons of feedback on a critical branding decision, while having a fun, unique, and potentially buzz-building little experiment that could drive users to your home page daily. Perhaps most importantly, it requires no commitment on Yahoo's part, considering the bad PR Microsoft and eBay both recently experienced when announcing their new logos.
She is crazy smart, likely a genius in her field. I just think this move to Yahoo is a long shot, motivated by Hubris more than anything and I still don't think it will bode well for her. I hope I'm wrong, but there are some things all the brains in the world can't fix.
I know plenty of people will make "rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic" comments, but it's not like doing this will have diverted huge amounts of talent that would be used making an amazing app or something.
Their old logo looked very outdated. Apparently there are 30 days until we see the final new one (?!) so I'll reserve judgement, but a little rebranding could be good for Yahoo at this point.
It's really cool seeing Yahoo shake itself and try to rebirth itself in 2013. Maybe it'll grow again, maybe it'll all be for naught, but it's really cool watching these signs of life.
It's so busy, I have no clue what I'm supposed to be looking at. Things are popping up as I move the mouse, there's a video playing, there are tabs in the middle, down the left, on top, weather, stock quotes. Forget the logo, fix the site!
The 'oo' does seem to look quite a bit like an infinity symbol. And if I had to guess, I'd say it's intentional.
However, it's not as obvious what branding message it's supposed to convey. Unfortunately, my first thought was something like: "Don't count us out, we'll be around forever!" Which probably isn't a good message. Other visual effects, e.g. the negative space in the FedEx logo, are more obvious.
Then again, maybe no one noticed it. Or maybe it's just a sideways 8.
