Yahoo! Yanks Porn Materials

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Leading Internet portal Yahoo! Inc. will remove pornographic products from its shopping, auctions and classifieds Web pages.

The move is in response to angry e-mails from Yahoo users following news reports this week that the company quietly had expanded its online offerings of porn videos, Jeff Mallett, president and chief operating officer, said Friday.

Yahoo had offered adult products on its shopping pages — where the company gets a cut of the sales — for two years.

Mallett said in an interview that Yahoo had not significantly increased its adult offerings in recent months, but rather had created a new category for them on its shopping pages and tightened its access controls to keep children out.

Still, the perception that Yahoo was embracing porn was enough to lead to the change, Mallett said.

"Our main concern is our users. Their opinion matters most," Mallett said, "It's not a case of what has changed or not changed."

Yahoo also announced that it would stop entering into new contracts for banner advertisements for adult merchandise. The changes will be made in the United States over the next few weeks.

Mallett said the loss of revenue from the adult products would not have a significant impact on the company's bottom line.

Yahoo, which claims to have 192 million registered users worldwide, was the second-most popular site in the United States in February, with 57 million visitors, according to Jupiter Media Metrix.

The porn flap couldn't come at a worse time for Yahoo, which has seen online advertising — which generated 90 percent of last year's revenue — plunge with the dot-com bust and the overall slowing of the economy.

Once one of the most profitable Internet companies, Yahoo now is struggling to make money and on Wednesday announced more than 400 layoffs, 12 percent of the work force.

Mallett deflected a question about whether the no-porn decision was made in light of the other bad news surrounding the company, though he acknowledged "the spotlight is definitely on us" because of the site's popularity.

"We don't expect that to change," he said. "As a leader, we're willing to take that heat."

Yahoo has been embroiled in other controversies over the material available on its massive site.

French groups sued last year to block Yahoo from letting Nazi memorabilia be sold on its auction pages. A French judge ordered the portal to keep French users from seeing the material.

Yahoo said the order would be impossible to comply with. Later, after the company began charging for auction listings, Yahoo banned the sale of Nazi merchandise, saying it did not want to profit from it. Still, Yahoo is asking a federal judge in San Jose to rule that French court decisions cannot be enforced on American companies.

Yahoo also has come under fire for being the host of online chats by white supremacists and other hate groups.

Yahoo recently began donating ad space in the chat rooms to Tolerance.org, a new site set up by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The ads also will appear when users enter words such as "Nazi" or "hate" on Yahoo's search engine.