In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo • Hacker News Board

Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo

#101

Post by ChuckMcM » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 4:08 AM UTC

pfedor wrote: post #74

ChuckMcM wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amongst others, Blekko also provides results for them on occasion (disclaimer I work for Blekko)

Isn't Blekko also powered by Bing? It had the same result for hiybbprqag.

Actually no, we've got our own multi-billion page index, however we do farm out the long tail stuff (like hiybbpraqag :-). At some point I should get a blog post up about modern web indexes, its really fascinating to look at the relevance curves of the first few billion pages out to the first trillion page mark.

Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo

#102

Post by Evbn » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 4:14 AM UTC

hnriot wrote: post #47

Aloisius wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

yes, there's a lot of misconceptions here on hn about what DDG actually is. Indexing the web, now, is beyond the capabilities and budget of individuals, you need the resources and backing of a company like google, ibm or microsoft to do so. DDG is federated search, not a search engine. While they might crawl a few sites, it's Bing that you're seeing in the result, the work of Microsoft engineers (along with any remai…

Gabriel seems to enjoy encouraging the misconception that DDG is a search engine.

Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo

#103

Post by sanxiyn » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 4:19 AM UTC

breckinloggins wrote: post #30

So 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…

Re: Trending Now and target audience

Do you seriously think if Google published Trending Now searches, it would be any different from Yahoo!? Or are you suggesting Yahoo! should editorialize?

Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo

#104

Post by mkl » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 4:19 AM UTC

breckinloggins wrote: post #30

So 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…

Curiously enough, the http://nz.yahoo.com page I got redirected to looks quite different and avoids many of the issues you point out.

Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo

#105

Post by Evbn » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 4:19 AM UTC

bborud wrote: post #75

ktizo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The universe is much bigger than the internet and reference encyclopedias are still useful and popular.

You are talking about our knowledge of the universe. Our knowledge of the universe is a lot smaller than the entire contents of the Internet (sad, but ultimately true). There is a reason why directories died and search took their place. Directories, in the form we know them, do not scale. There are far more people who would work to fill them with junk than there are people who would work to create order from chaos. A…

Wikipedia fails to link to a lot great in-depth sources of content that don't provide useful encyclopedia citations. For example, great forums on a particular topic that is not a provider of any coated fact.

Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo

#106

Post by Evbn » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 4:23 AM UTC

joering2 wrote: post #10

guelo wrote: post #7

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 know that YC has a stake in the Duck and pardon my ignorance but what is so "racketish-science" here in DDG that Marissa and bunch of Google engineers couldn't come up with on their own terms, without having to reach out to Y! wallet?

Scheme is racket science.

Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo

#107

Post by Evbn » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 4:26 AM UTC

afhof wrote: post #2

A lot of the changes listed in this article are as the title suggests "Googley". I am not that surprised by these actions though. It's easy to get used to the free food and the Friday meetings and then miss them elsewhere. That said, if I was working at one of Yahoo's remote offices, I'd feel pretty left out of the free food / etc. Do HQ Engineers work any harder than the others?)

Whoa, did she really write off employees outside of HQ? Even Google feeds the plebes outside the Garden of Eden.

Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo

#108

Post by Evbn » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 4:28 AM UTC

orijing wrote: post #54

Just curious, how much Google stock does she have, and does that affect what strategies she can pursue with Yahoo? i.e. it may encourage a more cooperative stance with Google than a competitive one, even if the latter is better for Yahoo individually.

I assume and hope she would divest from Google so that more of her net worth is contingent upon Yahoo's success more than Google's.

Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo

#109

Post by spullara » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 4:32 AM UTC

Evbn wrote: post #100

Me1000 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of companies don't provide free food, Apple, and Nest to name a couple. Talent won't be attracted by free food, but what it will do is cause the morale to change. People already working there will start getting excited about these new changes. Things become a little more fun. When your employees have a higher morale, they feel better about working harder, and they become more proud about what they're working on…

All hands meetings are morale boosting when they feature Oprah style handouts of fancy schwag. Business status reports, meh.

You are so wrong about this. Twitter copies google model and does this and it is amazing to have such communication.

Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo

#110

Post by Me1000 » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 4:41 AM UTC

Evbn wrote: post #100

Me1000 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of companies don't provide free food, Apple, and Nest to name a couple. Talent won't be attracted by free food, but what it will do is cause the morale to change. People already working there will start getting excited about these new changes. Things become a little more fun. When your employees have a higher morale, they feel better about working harder, and they become more proud about what they're working on…

All hands meetings are morale boosting when they feature Oprah style handouts of fancy schwag. Business status reports, meh.

Sorry, but the people who only get excited with fancy hand outs won't be at Yahoo much longer if Marissa does her job right.

She needs people who want to work long hours, and/or weekends. That kind of work ethic doesn't come from handouts, it comes from inspiring people around you to build something really awesome.