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What Happened to Yahoo

paulgraham.com

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Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#81

Post by philwelch »

mey wrote: post #32
mrshoe wrote: post #22

Apple is very conspicuously absent from this article. ...the kind of single-minded, almost obnoxiously elitist focus on hiring the smartest people that the big winners have had. Is Apple a big winner, like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook (the other companies he mentions repeatedly)? Bigger. (Check the last 1, 5 or 10 years on Google finance for the GOOG or MSFT comparison. FB is not public, but...) Do they have this…

I'd argue that Apple is a hardware design company that knows how to contract things correctly (from Mac era to today). Apple has always been focused on a complete packaged form, from Lisa to the iPad. They demand perfection, secrecy, and obsession from their people. Some of their worst years are because the business talent of Steve Jobs was not at the helm. How long did their core OS not have protected memory, or pre…

How long did their core OS not have protected memory, or pre-emptive multitasking?

About until Steve Jobs came back. But the Apple of 1985 to 1997 was not the Apple of today. That Apple is long dead. The Apple of today is basically NeXT, plus the branding and whatever other assets NeXT could salvage from Apple. As far as that company is concerned, their core OS had protected memory and preemptive multitasking since 1989.

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#82

Post by ratsbane »

pg wrote: post #47
srslydude wrote: post #38

[edit: this thread has some insightful replies by others that are worth reading.] I'm sorry, this may be PG's backyard, but I've gotta call bullshit. Note: I am not a Yahoo employee or corporate shill. 1. "At Yahoo this death spiral started early." Apparently this death spiral took TWELVE YEARS (the WWW is 20 years old), and Yahoo is still #1 (or #2) in terms of total properties on the web. How is this a death spiral…

I never implied all the Yahoo engineers are idiots. In fact I explicitly said the opposite: that the quality was uneven. Uneven means some good, some bad. Also, Viaweb didn't get hosed after being bought by Yahoo. It prospered enormously. I don't bear them any ill will.

I'd like to hear you talk more about what's happened to Yahoo stores. I worked with a Yahoo store (side consulting) for about five years now. Your Yahoo essay seems consistent with what I've noted. The Viaweb/Yahoo Store thing was very good in the late '90s but they haven't changed much since then and it's very dated now. I think they're coasting on the revenue, which I imagine is slipping away to eBay, Amazon, Shopify, etc.

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#83

Post by seregine »

paul wrote: post #17
wilschroter wrote: post #4

I think there's something to be said for focusing on what the market rewards, and clearly the market wasn't rewarding yahoo for having great technology in 1998. Nor did it reward Google for having great enterprise search. You can't fault Jerry and David for not seeing search when the market had clearly supported banners with no basis for search as a viable model yet.

When did Google have great enterprise search?

I remember trying a Google intranet search "appliance" around 2003 and it was way better than the previous (homebrew?) intranet search we had.

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#84

Post by randallsquared »

iamwil wrote: post #16
maxklein wrote: post #9

I really don't get these Yahoo is dead stories. It's still the biggest site in the world if all it's properties are put together.

When pg says something is dead, he doesn't mean it from a current revenue or size point of view.

When pg says something is dead, he doesn't mean it [...]

We got that. :)

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#85

Post by megablast »

plinkplonk wrote: post #49

"Most technology companies eventually get taken over by suits and middle managers." Interesting statement. I suspect this process is well under way at Google these days. But why does this happen? Is it just that once companies grow large enough, you need middle managers, (who then consolidate power and control)? Is there a more nuanced explanation?

People tend to hire people like themselves, who think and talk like they do. So once a few middle managers get in, they start to hire other middle managers.

They act like a secret club. They speak the same language, went to the same schools, have the same friends, hang around each other, know each other better than people not in the club. They tend to hire and promote other that are similar to them, more than simply basing it on merit.

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#86

Post by jdc »

mrshoe wrote: post #22

Apple is very conspicuously absent from this article. ...the kind of single-minded, almost obnoxiously elitist focus on hiring the smartest people that the big winners have had. Is Apple a big winner, like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook (the other companies he mentions repeatedly)? Bigger. (Check the last 1, 5 or 10 years on Google finance for the GOOG or MSFT comparison. FB is not public, but...) Do they have this…

Great hackers will work under great leaders who have only a working knowledge of the technology.

Steve Jobs is the conductor and Apple is the orchestra. Jobs can bring all the right people into a room, sell them his idea, and have them rabidly strive to produce.

The real difference here is the management's competence.

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#87

Post by srslydude »

chaosmachine wrote: post #72
srslydude wrote: post #38

[edit: this thread has some insightful replies by others that are worth reading.] I'm sorry, this may be PG's backyard, but I've gotta call bullshit. Note: I am not a Yahoo employee or corporate shill. 1. "At Yahoo this death spiral started early." Apparently this death spiral took TWELVE YEARS (the WWW is 20 years old), and Yahoo is still #1 (or #2) in terms of total properties on the web. How is this a death spiral…

"Which is the only company to _promote_ hacking culture to students? Yahoo." http://code.google.com/soc/

[fixed]

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#88

Post by philwelch »

srslydude wrote: post #38

[edit: this thread has some insightful replies by others that are worth reading.] I'm sorry, this may be PG's backyard, but I've gotta call bullshit. Note: I am not a Yahoo employee or corporate shill. 1. "At Yahoo this death spiral started early." Apparently this death spiral took TWELVE YEARS (the WWW is 20 years old), and Yahoo is still #1 (or #2) in terms of total properties on the web. How is this a death spiral…

When pg writes "Microsoft is dead" (and the outroar over that from MS apologists sounded a lot like your comment, angry capital letters and all) or "Yahoo is in a death spiral", he's talking about potential for growth, not necessarily short term feasibility as a profitable business. Yahoo is irrelevant to the Valley because by and large their stuff is old hat used by middle aged soccer moms in Nebraska. Lots of companies make lots of money off of middle aged soccer moms in Nebraska, but it's not a growth market, especially if the middle aged soccer moms all start joining Facebook and playing bingo there instead of Yahoo.

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#89

Post by csmeder »

mrshoe wrote: post #77
adammichaelc wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's hackerly...

No, it's not. That gets at the very essence of my original comment. One of the assertions in the article is that a hacker culture is a necessary ingredient for a successful technology company. I see Apple as a counterexample to this argument. And it's a counterexample that shouldn't be ignored. Apple is driven by design (industrial design, product design, graphic design). They think about products, not technology. Th…

Very good counter point. However, the few people I know that work at apple are good hackers. So maybe Apple is a cross between Design/Hacker culture. To me it seems optimal to balance the the Hacker culture with Designer culture. Kind of like a yin and yang. What are your thoughts PG? Doesn't design matter? Most YC funded web sites look very good. Isn't a design culture important to have?

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#90

Post by plinkplonk »

enneff wrote: post #74
plinkplonk wrote: post #49

"Most technology companies eventually get taken over by suits and middle managers." Interesting statement. I suspect this process is well under way at Google these days. But why does this happen? Is it just that once companies grow large enough, you need middle managers, (who then consolidate power and control)? Is there a more nuanced explanation?

"I suspect this process is well under way at Google these days." What's your basis for this speculation?

""I suspect this process is well under way at Google these days."

What's your basis for this speculation?"

Conversations with friends who work there mostly. One of the advantages of being older is that you know people in most companies who talk to you off the record over beer, sometimes in very "high" positions.

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