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The Glory That Was Yahoo

fastcompany.com

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Re: The Glory That Was Yahoo

#41

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

itwy wrote: post #32
netc wrote: post #31

Once I went to Stanford to attend Donald Knuth's Annual Christmas Lecture. During the talk he wanted to show some search query on google. What he did next was interesting. He typed yahoo.com in a browser's address bar and then searched for google on yahoo's search to reach to google!!

Why and why it's interesting?

Because even the people who invented modern computing and have a complete understanding of how the internet works, are still vulnerable to the bad habits that dictate our ability to use the internet.

I think what he is also saying is that Yahoo had a built in buffer, that they had to work really hard to fuck up. Because even Genius's turned to Yahoo to Google things for a long time.

Also anytime a genius can't do a basic task it is "interesting". Viral sites like Buzzfeed love spreading stories about how Steven Hawking couldn't figure out how to use his Comcast remote control.

Re: The Glory That Was Yahoo

#42

Post by lucas_membrane »

rossdavidh wrote: post #28

From Paul Graham, inside view: http://paulgraham.com/yahoo.html "What went wrong? The problems that hosed Yahoo go back a long time, practically to the beginning of the company. They were already very visible when I got there in 1998. Yahoo had two problems Google didn't: easy money, and ambivalence about being a technology company."

>> easy money

Some time around 1995-6, yahoo reported earnings $0.05/share above expectations after the markets closed, and the stock shot up more than $200.00 in after-hours trading. Can any company survive that?

Re: The Glory That Was Yahoo

#43

Post by pjmlp »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #30
russellbeattie wrote: post #9

IT's amazing that something so simple as a not having a clear vision/mission could take down a successful company but that's the essentially what happened at Yahoo! When I worked there in 2004 it was just confused, chasing competitors and ideas, never deciding on what it wanted to be when it grew up. I left a year or so later and from what I saw it never figured itself out. I always wanted the company to focus on a m…

Google seems to be falling into a similar pattern with it's many different attempts at chat apps

Not only chat apps.

Android, Flutter, ChromeOS, PWA, Fuchsia...

Feel like using the NDK on Android?

Legacy gradle plugin, Gradle stable plugin with cmake, ndk-build or eventually the new C/C++ support being developed by Gradle.

Ah, and then there is Blaze as well.

Re: The Glory That Was Yahoo

#45

Post by prostoalex »

> Yahoo Briefcase, for instance, did cloud storage long before the likes of Dropbox, Box, and Google Drive.

Ha. Yahoo! had an internal idea portal and a review team. Expanding Y! Briefcase storage was the first thing I submitted to that portal upon joining the company in 2005 (I am sure I wasn't the first to think of it, but there was no way to see previously submitted stuff).

The response from the ideas counsel was that Briefcase at the time was primarily used to illegally share music/video, and expanding personal storage would only exacerbate bad behavior. It would be in company's interest to sunset the service, not expand it.

Re: The Glory That Was Yahoo

#46

Post by JAFTEM »

GeoCities in the early 2000's is where I first created and built something with a computer and the Internet and the experience started the journey towards becoming a software developer. I still remember using a hit counter to track how many people visited my cartoon fan-site (I was 10, 11 years old) and getting excited over 20 visitors.

Re: The Glory That Was Yahoo

#47

Post by mooreds »

prostoalex wrote: post #45

> Yahoo Briefcase, for instance, did cloud storage long before the likes of Dropbox, Box, and Google Drive. Ha. Yahoo! had an internal idea portal and a review team. Expanding Y! Briefcase storage was the first thing I submitted to that portal upon joining the company in 2005 (I am sure I wasn't the first to think of it, but there was no way to see previously submitted stuff). The response from the ideas counsel was…

Has there ever been a time where a lawyer helped promote a new product idea? Seems like they are in the business of saying (kinda like accountants). This is a useful protective function, but can definitely cause stasis. Not sure how to balance it.

Re: The Glory That Was Yahoo

#48

Post by prostoalex »

mooreds wrote: post #47
prostoalex wrote: post #45

> Yahoo Briefcase, for instance, did cloud storage long before the likes of Dropbox, Box, and Google Drive. Ha. Yahoo! had an internal idea portal and a review team. Expanding Y! Briefcase storage was the first thing I submitted to that portal upon joining the company in 2005 (I am sure I wasn't the first to think of it, but there was no way to see previously submitted stuff). The response from the ideas counsel was…

Has there ever been a time where a lawyer helped promote a new product idea? Seems like they are in the business of saying (kinda like accountants). This is a useful protective function, but can definitely cause stasis. Not sure how to balance it.

Oops, I meant to type "council". It was a collective body from what I gathered.

Re: The Glory That Was Yahoo

#49

Post by esfandia »

With every re-design, their services get worse. Yahoo Sports used to have easy access to boxscores and game recaps. My Yahoo's RSS content fetching has been broken for a while. Problem is, there are no real alternatives either.
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