And What about Yahoo?
June 30, 2011
Google has been rolling out products that redefine its business: Google+, Android’s staggering growth, and legal hassles that numb my mind. Facebook got ready for summer by announcing that it had upwards of 700 million “members.” Amazon’s interesting infrastructure worked well enough for the company to announce that it would move the Kindle to iPad territory.
And what about Yahoo?
Two things caught my attention. First, I noticed that finding the link to the personalized page I set up years ago required navigating to Yahoo.com and then back to the personalized page. That’s one way to get page views from a person who is already on record as disliking the number of clicks I have to do to get my Yahoo mail. I am a premium Yahoo mail user and I still have to jump through hoops. What’s this tell me? Trouble in click land. Yahoo is a high traffic site compared to BigO Tires. I think Yahoo and a couple of other big fellas are twiddling with pages to crank up the traffic numbers. For me, this is something I want to watch. I hope I am wrong. But if I am correct, the softening of Web traffic is going to be a major headache.
Second, I noticed some PR wing flapping. The spin out of a company focused on Hadoop is one example. If you want the “real” journalists take on this development, read “Yahoo, Benchmark Capital Launching Independent Company for Apache Hadoop.” My hunch is that the reason for the move is the RedHat rainbow and its pot of gold. Will Hadoop with Yahoo’s purple mantle become the next RedHat? Nope. The other thing that caught my attention was the rumor that Yahoo was ripe for more management upheaval. One of my goslings was excited to read “Yahoo Is Quietly Looking For Replacements for Carol Bartz, Says Report.” So far, no turmoil but the rumor, like the Hadoop play, lights up my radar.
What is clear is that Yahoo is dropping from the top tier of Web properties. Like the spectacular fall of MySpace.com, certain online services are tough to reinflate. I use a low power, low cost netbook from Toshiba for some work at night when I am flopped on the floor with my boxers, Max and Tess. Yahoo mail does not like my tiny screen and keeps insisting that I use the “new” Yahoo mail. If I click the button for the “new” Yahoo mail, Yahoo tells me that my netbook cannot run the new Yahoo mail. So I go back to the same clunky Yahoo interface I have been using for years. Yahoo is persistent. I keep getting asked to switch. I find the assumption that everyone must use the new mail fascinating. Nice job of personalization for a paying customer? Nope.
Net net. Yahoo seems to be struggling when I try to use the service to meet my needs. Here’s my checklist of issues:
- Clutter
- Redesign that gets in the way of doing a basic task like reading a message
- Search that returns results that are less useful than Bing.com’s results. (I find this amazing.)
I hope Yahoo can find a way to kindle excitement in its products and services. As a case study, Yahoo is an exemplary instance of 21st century business strategy.
Stephen E Arnold, June 30, 2011
From the leader in next-generation analysis of search and content processing, Beyond Search.
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