Reuters: Yahoo defends intrusive ads, fees: "Responding to an attendee who complained about the intrusiveness of recent Yahoo ads, Coleman said that touched on one thing companies must balance: consumers' desires and advertisers' needs. "Yahoo did get started with a cool thing that allowed (consumers) to go anywhere. There was an internal zealot-like attitude where everything was consumer-driven, but the fact of the matter is, it's a business," said Coleman, who came to Yahoo about seven months ago from Reader's Digest."

And what a smart business it is to piss off users in order to please advertisers. I can spend money if you're able to provide me a good online service. It's high time Yahoo thought of balancing consumers' needs and advertisers' desires, and not the contrary.

Guess who, between Yahoo and Google, will be able to charge more for premium services in the long run (and make web ads work while we're at it). Yahoo seems to lose it a little more every month.