American company Yahoo! announced its plans to launch the Yahoo.ro portal in August-September this year, Romanian business daily Ziarul Financiar reads on Tursday. Yahoo Romanian representative Bobby Voicu explained for HotNews.ro that yahoo.ro will offer local content for Romanian users. He added that currently there was no need for an office in Romania but if required, one will be set up.

Yahoo! Europe Business development director Darren Patterson declared that he visited Romania this week to prepare the website. Bobby Voicu said that in the following months other Yahoo! Europe representatives will arrive in Romania.

Yahoo! also plans to set up a Romanian version of Yahoo! Messenger and Yahoo! Mail but there was no clear date as to when they will be launched. Recently Yahoo! named their Yahoo! Romania community manager in the person of Bobby Voicu. He will have no direct connection with Yahoo!advertising.

Yahoo! is one of the most important online players in Romania, with over 8 million e-mail users, 7 million instant messaging and over 300,000 users of the Flickr portal.