Late last year, longtime New York Times tech columnist David Pogue announced he was leaving that gig to work for Yahoo. Pogue began his Times “State of the Art” column in 2000, and was considered one of the most-read newspaper tech columnists, probably No. 2 behind the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg, who also left at the end of 2013.

On Tuesday at the International CES trade show in Las Vegas, Pogue unveiled the revamped Yahoo Tech during a keynote speech by CEO Marissa Mayer. By all accounts his presentation was vintage Pogue – energetic, loud and irreverent. You can watch in the video below; Pogue appears at the 33:00 mark, just after Yahoo’s new “Global Anchor,” Katie Couric, leaves the stage.

Now, Yahoo has always had technology news in its mix, but the launch of Yahoo Tech is part of a new strategy by Mayer to remake Yahoo as a media company. Pogue, whose Times columns were always aimed squarely at the masses – more so than Mossberg, who wrote for an audience primarily interested in business – has taken the idea of “plain English” technology journalism for the masses and expanded it into a full website with Yahoo Tech.

In explaining this, however, Pogue decided to take gratuitous swipes at other technology news sites that primarily cater to geeks and techies. Mocking big-name sites by poking fun of their names – The Verge became “The Urge,” Gizmodo was “Gizmoody,” Engadget was “Enbadger” – Pogue insulted many of the people in the audience who were watching him. He then called out specific headlines as examples of incomprehensible jargon, naming the writers whose stories appeared under them.

Needless to say, Twitter lit up with a fury as writers for these sites expressed tribal outrage.

haha @pogue is openly pitching a tech site for idiots pic.twitter.com/0TLrXimdLA — John Herrman (@jwherrman) January 7, 2014

David Pogue just cashed in a year’s worth of Marissa Mayer’s goodwill with the tech press. — nilay patel (@reckless) January 7, 2014

Our friend @Pogue has officially joined the geriatric set, sorry I mean started writing for @YahooTech aka Internet’s past etc. Good luck! — Om Malik (@om) January 7, 2014

Yahoo Tech, as Pogue writes in the new site’s introductory post, is not aimed at those who obsessively keep up with every little aspect of tech. Instead, it’s for those who techies semi-derisively refer to as “normals” – everyday people trying to use tech to make their lives a little easier or more fun.

While Pogue’s approach may have been the onstage equivalent of clickbait – he was deliberating riling his competitors to get them to express outrage and thus draw attention to the new site – Pogue is correct in that the big tech sites don’t cater to the mainstream. The question is, will Yahoo Tech succeed in drawing a non-tech-obsessed audience.

To a certain extent, Yahoo Tech is a digital throwback to the technology sections found in newspapers in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I’m very familiar with these, as I wrote most of the content for the Chronicle’s own tech section. You’ll notice, of course, that we no longer have a technology section, which is true for nearly all the newspapers that started one back then. They didn’t survive for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that advertisers didn’t support them. Technology companies wanted their ads in the A section of those papers, as do most other advertisers, and oh yeah, there was the Internet. Ad buyers shifted dollars to a medium where they could better target their messages in a very precise and measurable way.

But here’s the thing about online tech sites: Mainstream readers don’t seek out tech info on a regular basis. It’s my experience from years of serving tech info to the mainstream that they tend to seek it out when they’re in the market for a new device or service, or when the products they’re using break. Otherwise, they’re not particularly interested in reading about tech.

And even when they’re shopping for new tech, they don’t necessarily seek out traditional reviews. They’re more apt to ask their friends (“Hey, you just bought a new iPad Mini, how do you like it?”) or browse user reviews, like the ones found under products for sale on Amazon.com. Think about it: Does your Uncle Ned rush over to The Verge when he wants to buy a new smartphone? Eh, probably not.

That’s Yahoo Tech’s challenge – getting people to think of the site when they need its info. Pogue’s name may be a draw for a certain audience, but here’s a test: Ask your mom if she knows who he is.

But the new site’s advantage is that, despite its struggles of late, Yahoo remains an important destination among mainstream Internet users, many of whom still have it set as their browser’s home page. Yahoo tech’s plain-English approach is the right one for its intended audience, but will they come often enough to justify its existence? Or, in a few years, will it go the way of the newspaper tech sections it’s mimicking?

When you seek out detailed tech news, where do you go? Does something like Yahoo Tech appeal to you?