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Ask HN: How would you save Yahoo and bring it back to top place ?

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Re: Ask HN: How would you save Yahoo and bring it back to top place ?

#41

Post by yuvadam »

bvi wrote: post #32
lmkg wrote: post #11

"Back in top place" of what? Seriously, answering that question should probably be their number 1 priority. Right now they can't say that "What Yahoo! does is X," much less "Yahoo! is #1 at X," for any X. They need a direction. Answering that question won't solve all of their problems, not by a hell of a long shot, but anything that is effective at solving their problems will necessitate answering that question. They…

> Seriously, answering that question should probably be their number 1 priority. Spot on. Focus on nothing else but this initially. Remember Carol Bartz's answer to "What is Yahoo?"? "What is Yahoo? Listen Yahoo is a great company that is very, very strong in content for its users, uses amazing technology to serve up what increasingly we think is going to be the web of one. For instance, on our today module in the fr…

I cringe when I read that.

At the same time I can't help but feel sorry for a company that once really was synonymous with 'the web' and nowadays has completely lost it's direction.

Re: Ask HN: How would you save Yahoo and bring it back to top place ?

#42

Post by ig1 »

ratsbane wrote: post #39
InclinedPlane wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This got me to thinking. Can anybody think of any Yahoo property that appears to have received more than, say, the equivalent of 6 months work from a single dev over the course of the last 5 years? Flickr has seen some teeny tiny changes but everything else seems to be stuck in perpetual stasis.

Good point. I do remember someone from Yahoo who spoke at the first Startup School about the webmail redesign - but that was five or six years ago. Why is everything stuck in perpetual stasis over there? Is it that the leadership doesn't have the vision to suggest or sign off on major redesigns, or that middle management can't make them happen?

They'be been rewriting Yahoo Mail in nodejs: http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2010/07/multicore...

Re: Ask HN: How would you save Yahoo and bring it back to top place ?

#43

Post by thrill »

Yahoo's existence is unimportant - maximizing the value to its shareholders is. Yahoo's well played effort to get purchased by Microsoft (at a much higher share price - nearly 3x the current?) was exactly the move it needed to make at the time - and it was pure idiocy to not finalize it. The next Yahoo CEO needs to get the current managers and staff of each department to justify their profit/loss status - if a manager is not up to that role then find one who is. Then sell the losses, and put those people to work elsewhere if a refocus is going to occur. Take what's left and optimize it. Look for any new ideas that complement the profit makers. And if an offer at 50% more than market value comes along, take it, damn it.

Re: Ask HN: How would you save Yahoo and bring it back to top place ?

#45

Post by aninteger »

bugsy wrote: post #29

It's a very interesting question. I use yahoo a fair bit for email accounts and for reading the news. I am not sure how they monetize this activity if at all. Recently they forced me out of the old interface with email. Now I can no longer open emails I want to read by option-clicking on links to open them in new browser tabs. All mouse clicks are intercepted by the javascript on the page. Without the ability to do t…

I made a comment earlier about the Yahoo mail interface as well and I agree with you that the new interface is too much. I think they still let you use the old interface but eventually they will force everyone to switch permanently.

Re: Ask HN: How would you save Yahoo and bring it back to top place ?

#46

Post by petervandijck »

dave1619 wrote: post #14

I would focus on two things: #1 innovation and #2 revenue. With innovation, as CEO I would lead a entire division focused on innovation and discovering the next billion dollar revenue source. Lots of prototyping, refining, and searching for the next big thing. With #2 revenue, I would focus on what currently is giving Yahoo the most revenue and seek ways to grow that. This would provide moderate growth but most impor…

Separate innovation divisions never work.

Re: Ask HN: How would you save Yahoo and bring it back to top place ?

#47

Post by sixtofour »

sixtofour wrote: post #37
kb101 wrote: post #27

1) A unified, coherent design language and user experience for the site. This would really make Yahoo stand out, as even Google is clunky with this ("more" and "even more"). As it stands currently, it's too visually cluttered and hard to navigate. Example: I used to use Babelfish a lot, but trying to browse to it from the front page is well-nigh impossible. Another thought: sort the list of Yahoo sub-sites by popular…

To your point 5, yes. Google is cool because it lets you search for cool stuff, but they aren't anything identifiable except as they find cool stuff for you. gmail and plus, sort of, I guess. Yahoo can BE cool stuff.

Ah, I see they're for sale.

Well, maybe they can be a bargain.

Re: Ask HN: How would you save Yahoo and bring it back to top place ?

#48

Post by samstave »

robryan wrote: post #9
jeremymcanally wrote: post #3

Nice try, new Yahoo CEO. ;) All kidding aside, they need to focus on some core products to start stabilizing their presence again. Give Flickr good leadership. Make Delicious a priority product. Figure out if the search product is worth maintaining. Above all, they need someone scrappy and clever to lead, not just contain the flailing of their tentacles.

Their search is outsourced now to Bing, as far as I know anyway, so they can't really build around outsourced search.

I am still reeling from this "strategy" - namely, WTF happened to all the infrastructure they previously had for search?

Where are the machines, the staff, the datacenters that were in place for this?

Re: Ask HN: How would you save Yahoo and bring it back to top place ?

#49

Post by ct »

They've pretty much lost the desktop search engine market. The mobile search is still petty nascent and lots of opportunities for innovation and a market leader.

So I'd get on the forefront of mobile making it the thing to focus on possibly partnering up with a hardware device developer. Fork Android OS and make customizations to it tailored for Yahoo services.

Invest in R&D for mobile search and bring something new and useful to the table that nobody else like Apple or Microsoft has to wow everyone and put them back on the map as an innovative company. ie. still lots of mobile browser inefficiencies that can be improved upon.

Lastly make everything lean and mean, and focus.

Re: Ask HN: How would you save Yahoo and bring it back to top place ?

#50

Post by [deleted] »

robryan wrote: post #9
jeremymcanally wrote: post #3

Nice try, new Yahoo CEO. ;) All kidding aside, they need to focus on some core products to start stabilizing their presence again. Give Flickr good leadership. Make Delicious a priority product. Figure out if the search product is worth maintaining. Above all, they need someone scrappy and clever to lead, not just contain the flailing of their tentacles.

Their search is outsourced now to Bing, as far as I know anyway, so they can't really build around outsourced search.

[deleted]
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