They had Geocities and Yahoo webhosting.
They had Flickr and Yahoo Photos.
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Their current problem is poor execution.
They've wanted to go into social media for a long time, and failed in many efforts.
Years ago Yahoo Profiles existed with explicit tie in with Yahoo Messenger.
Then Facebook came onto the scene and social became the new 'in thing'.
Yahoo Profiles was redesigned.
Then Yahoo Buzz was launched and poorly integrated with the above.
At the same time they had a stealth platform with its own social networking features.
They shut down the above stealth platform and redesigned Yahoo Profiles as Yahoo Pulse.
Now they're shutting down many of the features of Yahoo pulse--guest books, photos, blogging. Yahoo Buzz is gone as well.
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I question:
1. Why didn't Yahoo Profiles integrate with Flickr?
2. Why didn't they integrate with delicious? At one time Yahoo Profiles allowed you to add links to other pages, but these bookmarks were never replicated to delicious.
3. Why is Yahoo Profiles poorly integrated with Yahoo Groups? Will Yahoo groups get the axe next?
In the end, Yahoo's problem is though they have all the pieces of the puzzle , they have no clue how to put it together. Their divisions compete rather than provide synergy for one another.
They're not a vertically or even horizontally integrated product. Rather they are more like an amorphous conglomorate that sadly locks down its own internal products so that they aren't allowed to integrate even where it would be useful.