Yahoo gave up on being a technology leader when they killed their own search. If I was Mayer I would buy DuckDuckGo and say fuck it, we're taking on Google.
I thought DuckDuckGo relies on Bing for searching?
In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo
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Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo
#22Yahoo gave up on being a technology leader when they killed their own search. If I was Mayer I would buy DuckDuckGo and say fuck it, we're taking on Google.
There's not been a good simple general directory since yahoo stopped being one. Search is one thing, structured reference is different. Though it is a much more difficult problem now and would need a completely different approach to achieve it.
Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo
#23I think it's obvious that Yahoo! needs some serious internal "disruption." I think the biggest thing they need is relevance . Incremental improvements to their search, email, etc I don't think will matter. If Yahoo's search started being 5% better than Google, by whatever metric you prefer, would anyone really care? I would still use Google. I think in many consumer's view, and even probably many of us, we have all j…
I'll sum it up for you in one sentence: Marissa Mayer needs to figure out what Yahoo! is supposed to be good at.
Right now Yahoo! isn't remarkably good at anything.
Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo
#24Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo
#25Yahoo gave up on being a technology leader when they killed their own search. If I was Mayer I would buy DuckDuckGo and say fuck it, we're taking on Google.
Isn't DDG just Bing w/ some logic to bump up anything that shows up in various authoritative sites like Wikipedia?
Yahoo already uses Bing.
Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo
#26Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo
#27> Better search!
Yahoo was known for collating links, while Google had a killer algorithm.
But Google's drive to make the algorithm work all the time for everybody is causing some discontent. Power users are disappointed at (for example) the loss of +, and don't like the weird word substitutions and stemming that Google has introduced. And naive users are confused by overwhelming choice. They don't know the difference between the various sponsored links; they have no idea what a domain is so they aren't going to know if they're going to a trustworthy site or to scumbags.
Imagine how nice it would be if you entered your programming specific terms into a search engine and got carefully selected links back.
I don't know if free food is going to get that, but it's worth a try.
EDIT: I've just visited the Yahoo page for the first time in many years. It is laughably hideous. Sorry for any Yahooers, but this version is even uglier than the 199x page (black on silver?).
Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo
#28Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo
#29I tried to reach a Yahoo PR person for comment, but my phone remains unrung, even here in Israel. I don't understand this sentence. Is her phone more likely to ring because she's in Israel, or something?
The work week in Israel is Sunday through Thursday, so there probably were people in Yahoo! offices there.
Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo
#30So given all the hubbub lately I decided to visit Yahoo.com for the first time in years. I'm not really Yahoo's target audience, but my second-first impressions are:
- That little "Make Yahoo! your homepage" thing that slides down and moves the rest of the content with it has got to go (especially considering there's a "Make Y! your homepage" link RIGHT below it).
- Clicking on the dot in the exclamation point still does the "Yahoo!" jingle, which is nice, but I don't like the new jingle. It's too polished. Old one was better.
- The actual search bar is a bit heavy and "2005 Web 2.0" looking, but I suppose it needs to be a little chunky to stand out from everything else on the page (and there's a lot).
- Overall, I like the color scheme and design, but it still feels a bit "heavy". The fact that there's SO MUCH STUFF on the front page suggests that this real estate is a design-by-committee thing and that politics is heavily involved. There's so much stuff and it's packed so tightly together that I really can't decide what I want to look at.
- The Olympics banner is neat.
- The top news rotator is OK, but it's a little clumsy.
- The subsections, like Yahoo! News and Yahoo! TV, feel too different from each other and too different from the main site.
- Speaking of target audience, the "Trending Now" section is neat, but I'm not sure I like what it's saying. Between that, the "Must-See Videos on Yahoo!", and the "Most Popular" section below it, I get the feeling that I just stepped into a middle-class hair salon. I'm not trying to be elitist, it's just that this site really seems to scream "late 30-something suburbian white woman with a minivan" in a way that most other sites don't, so I don't feel very welcome here. Shouldn't the front page to one of the world's most recognized online brands start out a little more neutral and slowly BECOME about whatever it is you're usually interested in? ArsTechnica does a good job of this, building up a "Your Stories" section based on stuff you've clicked on an (presumably) how long you stuck around after you clicked.
- A little more nitpicky, but I think it's another indication of Yahoo!'s most prime real-estate being driven by corporate politics and ladder-climbing (because I'm going to give the page designer a benefit of the doubt): take a look at all the section headings. You have "YAHOO! SITES", "TRENDING NOW", "MUST-SEE VIDEOS ON YAHOO!", "MOST POPULAR", "POLL", "FAVORITES". There doesn't seem to be much consistency in the color or font size with these.
- So, yeah, "Favorites". How come I just NOW (within the last 30 seconds) found that? It's way below the fold of the sites list. Aren't my favorites kind of important? Shouldn't they be above "Yahoo! Sites"? And why are they already populated? Yahoo! on FB, Yahoo! on Twitter? How are those my favorites? I never told you I liked those... These are the kind of things that make it a little TOO obvious that I, humble visitor, am the product being sold.
- The bottom footer (no, not the real footer, the footer above that) seems redundant. "More Yahoo! Sites" contains only slightly different content than the "Yahoo! Site" area, and there's already a way from right there to see more. If you want to promote new or underperforming sub-sites, why not try a sites recommendation engine based on the stuff you've visited? Follow Yahoo could be placed elsewhere, and the "About Yahoo" stuff can certainly be combined and replace the "About our Ads" thing on the real footer.
- When performing an actual search, the results aren't too bad (they're powered by Bing, which isn't wonderful but it isn't terrible either). In fact, the search listings are a lot less cluttered than what Google's results have become.... it's almost refreshing.