Authorized showcase sites, such as the property that Yahoo and other Google rivals are building with the big media conglomerates, always run the risk of being dull. How dull are we talking? Yahoo viewers missed the most exciting moment of last year's World Cup, the bitter end to the career of French soccer capital Zinedine Zidane, sent off for head-butting an opponent. It was a news story. Yahoo had fair use rights to run a short clip, but it chose not to. Terry Semel, the entertainment industry old-timer who tried to take Yahoo to Hollywood, told a conference this week, the Sunnyvale internet company took "the longer-term view". "We really wanted to do the best that we possibly could to stay very friendly with the existing suppliers of content," he said. And to think Yahoo once cared about those other suppliers, of eyeballs: its users.