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

Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo

#131

Post by franze » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 8:51 AM UTC

voidfiles wrote: post #76

Free food is a big idea. As a one time Yahoo, I was shocked. This shows to me that Mayer is going to be different. I am not sure if every CEO previous to her had this choice, but none of them did it. It either proves that the board has given her a lot of leeway, or all the others have been weak kneed. Seriously, food is a big deal, someone at my orientation asked a VP why we didn't get free food. She answered by expl…

that's the worst possible answer the VP could have made. this comment alone would be enough reason to quit any job.

employees work for the company. every company has a goal. employees work (hard) to push the company to reach that goal. shareholders invest in that goal. it's the goal that matters, not the shareholders monetary desires.

said that, i dont know if Y! has any goals.

Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo

#132

Post by maayank » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 9:29 AM UTC

ars wrote: post #84

powera wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The work week in Israel is Sunday through Thursday, so there probably were people in Yahoo! offices there.

Sunday in Israel was the 9th of Av, which is a very solemn fast day. I doubt if anything at all was open. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tisha_B%27Av

9th of Av is less observed in general Israeli society, compared to other occasions. Other occasions (i.e. Jom kippur, shavuot) all/most (depends on the occasion) businesses would be closed, but not on 9th of Av.

Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo

#133

Post by bborud » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 9:30 AM UTC

Evbn wrote: post #105

bborud wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If directories are really useful and people want/need them, why has the Open Directory Project stranded? Why doesn't anyone use it? Why doesn't anyone talk about it? And if people do not like that particular project, why has there been no spinoffs, no copycats, no startups to do Directory 2.0?

It is right here: http://www.dmoz.org/ and unfortunately it is a ghetto.

Wikipedia might not work as a direct replacement for directory services, but when it comes to helping you acquire knowledge, I think it does a better job. Even when the articles you find are sparse because they might help you formulate better queries to stuff into The Google.

Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo

#134

Post by vorg » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 9:30 AM UTC

chao- wrote: post #90

velodrome wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Yahoo all the time. Here are my complaints (which many yahoo users always complain about in the comment section): -No consistency across sites -They censor a lot of the comments -The comment system never works right -The comment system constantly switches from facebook comments to yahoo comments. -A lot of the services don't work right (like retrieving portfolio data). Sometime it works, other times it does not…

Genuinely curious what keeps you in Y! Mail over GMail. Is it the history of your messages, the familiarity of the system, or something else entirely? The last time I looked at Yahoo's mail, you had to pay to enable IMAP access. Even stranger, it wasn't a recurring fee, but just some one-time deal. Seems to have changed now, at least?

I use a 15-yr old yahoo email account. They got me first, no I've never switched over.

I always use Google for search, even in China where it sometimes plays up. Google got me first (after Altavista folded).

There's some of us who don't switch due to inertia, which are the types of customers many businesses, e.g. banks, make most of their money from.

Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo

#135

Post by bborud » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 9:32 AM UTC

stevewilhelm wrote: post #126

bborud wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just to name a few: on the consumer side, Yahoo! is remarkably good at Sports including Fantasy Football and Baseball, and on the technical side it's remarkably good at Hadoop.

It does an okay job with Hadoop. Parts of Hadoop are good (Zookeeper) and parts of it are well short of the mark (HDFS) and ought to have had more effort behind it years ago.

Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo

#136

Post by franze » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 9:41 AM UTC

Me1000 wrote: post #110

Evbn wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i dispise company cultures that encourage you to "want to work long hours, and/or weekends". if thats the (unspoken) goal of these culture changes, then you will end up with a bunch of burned out "friday night major release" staffers.

it's about cutting the crap, getting rid of balast and setting the right priorities, not about "long hours".

Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo

#137

Post by pmoehring » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 9:56 AM UTC

Wow, the smugness and adversity to Marissa Mayer is really evident here. Did these two have a run-in in the past or is that just KS's style of reporting?

Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo

#138

Post by ollysb » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 11:12 AM UTC

Cushman wrote: post #77

antidoh wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"there's SO MUCH STUFF on the front page" I haven't been there for a long time, so I went there to follow your critique, and my first thought was WTF is all this? This is like a 90s site map, with pictures.

I also checked the site out for the first time in a while. My first thought: "This looks like AOL.com." But of course I haven't been to AOL in forever either, maybe they've changed. So I checked them out too. Yep, can't tell the difference.

Ha, thought I'd have a look out of curiosity, the aol.com is actually far cleaner.

Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo

#139

Post by mgkimsal » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 11:29 AM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #87

rmason wrote: post #6

Looks like Marissa has learned the lesson told by Steve Blank in his famous essay, the elves leave middle earth http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-eart... It has bought her time with the engineers while she decides what to do.

I love this comment on the @sgblank post: When I started at mindspring as a startup (a dial up company) there were some very interesting rules. 1. Drug testing policy. If you have drugs we will test them. Classic stuff. That's the kind of culture I want to build at Fogbeam Labs when we get to the point of having employees. I like to say "let's be the Mötley Crüe of software companies." Hard partying, hard fighting, a…

I wish you success in that endeavour. The danger is that you might try to be "the Mötley Crüe of software companies" but end up being seen as "the Winger of web apps". I just had some Beavis and Butthead flashbacks when I read your post ;)

Re: In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo

#140

Post by Terretta » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 12:03 PM 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…

> this site really seems to scream "late 30-something suburbian white woman with a minivan" in a way that 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

On the contrary, you, personally, are not Yahoo's stereotypical user. Yahoo absolutely should start out appealing to its primary demographic as that will hook the greatest number of new visitors, and you've just described the typical web user. That web user will feel much more at home on this default page than on Ars Technica's default page.

I agree with you that in time, the page should adapt, and preferably rapidly. The difference is the starting point which should be the same as the starting point in the grocery checkout lane. You also shop at the grocery, but the checkout lane isn't designed for you.