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What Happened to Yahoo

paulgraham.com

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Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#191

Post by forgottenpaswrd »

sliverstorm wrote: post #10

As far as I was concerned (admittedly I was still a kid at the time), all that mattered was the Yahoo homepage was garish and full of ads, and the results were hard to sift through (because they were full of 'sponsored links' and the page was equally garish). Google was the antithesis of all that, and that's why I used, liked, and rooted for Google.

That's exactly what I felt. Google respects me(no flashing ads), I respect Google.

I was a kid too when I used Altavista, it was a great search tool back in the day... until they fckd it totally.

I had seen it happen with other services like ftpsearch(you know the name of a file, you got it instantly).

When I saw the first Ad blinking on my face(Altavista put suits on place, "monetizing stuff") I discovered reading on searchlores "Google": It was so easy and powerful and NO annoying ads!!

I couldn't believe it, and expected it to surrender to the MBAs forces soon as the other had. But they got money to buy some freedom.

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#192

Post by Confusion »

philwelch wrote: post #95
mrshoe wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think what pg means by "hackerly culture" is any different from what you said. It sounds like Apple is doing exactly what pg tells hackers to do: make something people want. "Hackerly culture" to me implies that you have people ("hackers") who are able to explore the space of possibilities and invent new things rather than just building them to some businessman's specification. It's not essential that you ven…

Down that road lies that 'hackerly' finally becomes redefined as 'everything we consider a good thing'. It's OK for Apple to not be 'hackerly', while still being able to develop great products and software.

My girlfriend studies industrial engineering and knows quite a bit about innovation and product development. If I combine everything I've heard from her with everything I've heard about Apple, then I conclude that Apple simply excels at leveraging/executing all the well-known 'best practices'. There's nothing 'hackerly' required to do proper innovation and product development, unless you expand 'hackerly' to include 'doing business the way it should be done'

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#193

Post by forgottenpaswrd »

cletus wrote: post #20

Yahoo went bad because: 1. It has no notable engineering foundation; 2. It has no clear vision about what it is and where it's going; and 3. Like Microsoft, it's put a business person in charge, which is the death knell of any tech company. You need someone with a technical foundation or a product person, not a business wonk.

You need to put a business person in place, who also has a technical background(look at Steve Jobs, although he is not a techie, he worked from day one with technical people and understand them).

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#194

Post by cdr »

sh1mmer wrote: post #138

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…

All I know is that everyone I personally know that had worked at Yahoo had left by a year or two ago. For me, personally, that doesn't exactly leave a very positive impression.

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#195

Post by demodifier »

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.02/yahoo.html Anyone remember this article in Wired from way back in 2007? It goes into the details of the technology company vs a media enterprise dilemma of Yahoo as identified by Paul Graham in his piece and how then CEO Terry Semel messed it all up.

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#196

Post by philwelch »

Confusion wrote: post #192
philwelch wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think what pg means by "hackerly culture" is any different from what you said. It sounds like Apple is doing exactly what pg tells hackers to do: make something people want. "Hackerly culture" to me implies that you have people ("hackers") who are able to explore the space of possibilities and invent new things rather than just building them to some businessman's specification. It's not essential that you ven…

Down that road lies that 'hackerly' finally becomes redefined as 'everything we consider a good thing'. It's OK for Apple to not be 'hackerly', while still being able to develop great products and software. My girlfriend studies industrial engineering and knows quite a bit about innovation and product development. If I combine everything I've heard from her with everything I've heard about Apple, then I conclude that…

Well, here's what I mean--pg's essay criticized Yahoo for putting product managers in charge of dictating specs to programmers, instead of the programmers being able to think for themselves. I don't get the impression that's the case at Apple.

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#197

Post by tome »

cookiecaper wrote: post #183
MartinCron wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed this pervasive bias that if a person is good at programming, they must be terrible at anything and everything else. Perhaps this is a hacker-culture reaction to that kind of thinking?

In the specific case of HR, I think most people assume programmers would hate it because you're going from such an engaging and creative field (programming) to something that is totally brain-dead (filling out forms, reciting orientation spiels every few weeks, looking up answers about insurance and forwarding them on).

something that is totally brain-dead (filling out forms, reciting orientation spiels every few weeks, looking up answers about insurance and forwarding them on)

Sounds a bit like writing FooInterface and FooInterfaceImpls all day, to me.

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#198

Post by philwelch »

wwortiz wrote: post #117
philwelch wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy and social networking are naturally opposing ideas--social networking is all about sharing information with people and privacy is all about keeping information from people. That's like saying Google ("organize the world's information") overlooked the importance of disorganization or ignorance. It won't be privacy at all that Facebook overlooks, it'll be something completely orthogonal to that axis. It is, how…

Socializing however is all about varying levels of privacy. I won't tell my coworkers or boss the same things I tell my friends, I won't tell my friends what I tell my close friends, and my family sits on the highest tier. Maybe facebook will get this maybe it won't, or in general maybe it is impossible on the web where information tends to be so open.

Nobody at Facebook told you that Facebook was the best way to discuss the most personal aspects of your life with the people who are closest to you--though it includes private messaging, which may be good enough if you can't see them in person.

If you want privacy, don't share private information on Facebook. If you want to remain ignorant of your favorite sports team's latest scores or the most disgusting new genre of porn or how some movie you haven't seen yet ends, don't look them up on Google. The "next big thing" that Facebook is going to miss is not something people can already get by simply restricting their usage of Facebook, it'll be on a different axis entirely.

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#199

Post by philwelch »

megablast wrote: post #85
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…

But wait, can't the hackers do the same thing?

Re: What Happened to Yahoo

#200

Post by loewenskind »

startupcto wrote: post #52

Tens years from now, will you be writing the same article with the title "what happened to Google?". I'd say likely. Companies come and go. Just like assuming Facebook is the THE social graph because somewhere somehow another entrepreneur is working on that next Facebook or Google.

10 years? I'd say it will happen in less than half that time. Personally, I think the cycles (like everything else) are getting faster.
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