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What Happened to Yahoo

paulgraham.com

141–150 of 282 posts

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#141
post #77

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…

"They think about products, not technology."

How can you be so sure about their thought process? Maybe it is the other way around, they just turn it around when it comes to presenting it to the public.

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#142
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 1…

Let’s make some other statements about as reasonable as yours (absent further supporting explanation):

The Mughal India of the 16th–19th centuries was not the India of today. That India is long dead. The India of today is basically the British Raj, plus the branding, mix of religions and whatever else the British could salvage.

The Republican party of 1860–1970 was not the Republican party of today. That GOP is long dead. The GOP of today is basically the unholy mix of Kristol & Podhoretz foreign & economic policy with Jerry Falwell & Pat Robertson social policy, plus the branding and whatever panders to fiscal conservative constituents they could salvage from the party’s historic base of support.

The field of economics of 1780–1950 was not the economics of today. That economics is long dead. The economics of today is basically the Friedmanite Chicago school, plus the branding and whatever other assets they could salvage from economics.

Now, in all three of these cases, there’s some little bit of truth behind the wholly oversimplified (to the point of wrongness) analysis. But taking these statements at face value obscures more than it reveals, and reflects a poor understanding of how cultural assimilation works in any institution or society. (And denies evolutionary change, as well; Apple today is not exactly the same as Apple of ca. 2000)

* * *

In short: you’d better have some better analysis to back yourself up here, because as it stands I think your claim is, to the first approximation, false, even if there is a tiny bit of truth to it.

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: Speaking of talent: Yahoo got best paper at EVERY data-related conference in 2010. No single lab(Google,MS) or university(Stanford etc) has ever done this. Clearly you can achieve this without talent, pg! engineers/hackers don't usually focus on doing academic research and writing academic papers targeted to top-tier academic conferences. Yahoo Research is certainly a leader in the academic world, but that might…

engineers/hackers don't usually focus on doing academic research and writing academic papers targeted to top-tier academic conferences. I am in total agreement with this. These days anything targeted towards top-tier conferences typically has a sales-marketing slant wrapped around it.

[deleted]

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#144

[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…

Re: Speaking of talent: Yahoo got best paper at EVERY data-related conference in 2010. No single lab(Google,MS) or university(Stanford etc) has ever done this. Clearly you can achieve this without talent, pg! engineers/hackers don't usually focus on doing academic research and writing academic papers targeted to top-tier academic conferences. Yahoo Research is certainly a leader in the academic world, but that might…

* SIGMOD Best Paper 2009: Available in Hadoop Pig as ILLUSTRATE command

* WSDM Best paper 2009: ""Aggregation of News Content Into Web Results"" : Search for "pakistan flood" on Yahoo.

* USENIX ATC Best paper 2010: Available as Apache Zookeeper.

In other words, Yahoo's research is not only _already_ in production / engineering, it is also open source for the world to use.

Note that Google / MSR's papers usually don't release source code.

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#145

In 2002, Yahoo! began a serious effort to compete with Google in search by buying Inktomi (plus Altavista and FAST). In what must have been early 2004, I came over with the rest of the Inktomi crew to work on search. The Inktomi people were top notch, Yahoo! seemed earnest about doing what it took to go head to head with Google, and the integration efforts were done really well. While I was there I worked in an islan…

Panama was eventually deployed (end of 06: http://techcrunch.com/2006/12/13/yahoo-begins-panama-roll-ou...), but it didn't compare well to Google's offerings in that it still didn't give as good relevancy for advertisers.

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#146
post #55
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If most (all) of your early employees are hackers, how does it not make sense to hire a hacker to manage HR?

Because different jobs need different skill sets? Why does being a 'hacker' make you qualified or even appropriate to manage something like HR or marketing?

How many hackers are CEO's and how many of those were ever qualified for that job at the start?

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#147
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…

Do they have this obnoxiously elitist focus? No.

You sure about that?

From http://www.apple.com/jobs/us/welcome.html:

"Whether you want to be an iPod engineer, a Concierge at an Apple Retail Store, or a sushi chef on an Apple campus (yes, we have sushi chefs), we’re looking for the best. People who are smart, creative, up for any challenge, and incredibly excited about what they do. In other words, Apple people. You know, the kind of people you’d want to hang around with anyway."

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#148
post #139

Somebody please help poor pg and design him some prettier buttons than those purple beveled monstrosities..

It's Yahoo Store. Those buttons were slick in 1996.

I wrote some Perl code that improved the look of those buttons (based on Trevor Blackwell's engine) at Viaweb back in 1997. I distinctly remember Paul, Trevor and others gathered around my screen to admire the new buttons. So nobody criticize the Yahoo Store buttons!

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#149

Disclaimer #1: My job is technology evangelist for Yahoo! So refuting this is probably the definition of my job. Disclaimer #2: This is my own completely unsanctioned opinion and does not necessarily represent Yahoo!'s views or opinions. I'm obviously biased here, but I have a great respect for HN and PG so I wanted to talk about this. PG accuses Yahoo! of two things right at the very top of the article and the rest…

My sense from meeting Yahoo devs is that they are ok, in that they have the credentials, but didn't seem very passionate or excited about new tech. Can you bring up some examples where Yahoo is pioneering a new field? (search, media delivery, social etc, what ever Yahoo as a company is really excited and passionate about internally...)
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