Unsurprising.

After all, pretty much every major online retailer photo-copied Amazon.com's layout, used white-out on the Amazon.com logo, and stuck their's on.

You guys didn't report that Excite.com's homepage is a ripoff of My Yahoo!

There is nothing new here.

I disagree with cv. Site ripoffs are a dime a dozen but this takes things to the next level. I mean come on, they're identical!

It's not so obvious, but portuguese internet service provider and search engine Sapo (www.sapo.pt) should be added to the list of Yahoo rip offs.

And it's not even an elegant rip off.

since when has this beta homepage been in the works? some people claim that it's been worked on before yahoo launched. I mean, c'mon, why would aol ever do that? I fail to see the point.

I want to comment on something I've been noticing a lot on valleywag. I'm all for re-telling of stories first reported elsewhere (especially if valleywag versions are far more entertaining than the original version as they usually do) but why not at least credit the source of your articles? As in this particular case: TechCrunch.

Well, UI theft happens all the time. The question is how far do you go to mask it. So this looks simply like sloppiness. No?

There's a "Give Us Feedback" link on top of the AOL page.

I agree that UI theft happens to some degree, but this is just blatant.

@soxiam: Hey, actually, I think we both got a tip-off from the same person. Arrington put his piece up overnight; I'm on the East Coast right now, and put up the item first thing my morning, before even looking at Techcrunch. When Arrington has a story, we give him credit, and then mock him, if at all possible.

I feel like I just walked into an art gallery full of people discussing whether 'Dogs Playing Poker' is a forgery.

Or maybe a fresh idea... AOL-TW buys Yahoo! Now that the web 2.0 boom is just about out of steam, TW has decided to keep AOL, so isn't the next logical stage an over-valued acquisition? They have already set their own example!

This kind of crap happens all the time when you put a non-designer in charge of a design project. The conversation typically goes something like this: "What are our competitors doing? They wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't working! Let's copy them and then iterate to improve upon it!"

What usually ends up happening is you get a craptacular version of the competitors design, missing all the useful features and not working as well ("that stuff is hard!") but on the surface appearing to be just close enough to satisfy the manager in charge.

Then, when it fails miserably, the designer gets blamed.

Err... I mean.... I've HEARD that's what happens....

The AOL campus in Mountain View is responsible for several sites on the portal. I know UI designers that left AOL for Yahoo, and UI designers who have left Yahoo for AOL. It's not surprising that they end up looking so similar.

that's just amazing. sort of like Google copying the Yahoo IE7 page. (Or was it the other way around?)

But I don't know what the fuss is. No one uses AOL anymore........................do they?

Nick was authenticated in the Yahoo! screenshot, but not in the AOL one.

Not that it would have made any real difference...

Some interesting tech-related news from around the web this week. • Imitation may be a form of flattery (the sincerest kind, so they say) but AOL, I think you might have taken it a bit too far. • AT&T Chief Edward "Moneybags" Whitacre is retiring. His going away present? $158.5 Million.

At AOL, we are now fully embracing the Web 2.faux strategy Ron layed out for us. Next step: changing our URL to Yhaoo.com.

www.yaolhoo.com

It's definitely the latter: "lost all capacity for independent thought." I worked in Dulles for many years and the brain-drain has been steady and continuous. Now, their current "leaders" can only point to some other competitor and demand, "Uh, yeah. Copy dat." So Ron Grant is the "human computer." Looks like his algorithmic specialty is screen-scraping. Shameful.

I heard a rumor that AOL has been testing this for a while now, and that Yahoo got a sneak peak of it and put it out before AOL did. Anyone know if this is true?

I worked at Yahoo from 2004-2004 and at AOL.com from 2004-2006.

Although AOL.com's new page clearly is a blatant ripoff of Yahoo, let's be fair. Yahoo blatantly ripped off the front and center "rotating interest story" from AOL.com ("95 year-old set to graduate" in the Yahoo screen shot, above) for its new homepage design last year.

Both sites copy from each other.