Yahoo: An Interesting Hatchet Job
April 20, 2016
I think that the Huffington Post is part of America Online, which is part of Verizon, which is supposed to be interested in buying poor old Yahoo.
I thought about that chain of dependent clauses right after I read “The One-Time Ruler of the Web Has Lost More Than Its Mojo — A Lesson for Us All.” The write up does a good job of pointing out that Yahoo has been lost in space for a long, long time. I highlighted this statement:
One researcher tracked Yahoo!’s “boilerplate,” the block of text that describes a company’s self-description found at the bottom of most press releases. In 24 years the boilerplate changed 24 times!
What’s interesting in this mélange of popular and academic statements about the home of the Yahooligans is that the company has lacked vision. Ah, the vision thing. This argument is supported by a statement allegedly made by Helen Keller:
It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.
Yahoo strikes me as an interesting company. One could argue that Yahoo did try to change to adapt to technology, competitors, and market opportunities. The effort, unlike Google’s approach, lacked the steady flow of cash produced by Google’s online advertising model.
Where did that Google online advertising model originate? GoTo.com which became Overture. Overture became a Yahoo property. The Google was “inspired” by that model. Perhaps one can view Google as a sibling of Yahoo, just a younger, sighted relative?
Stephen E Arnold, April 20, 2016
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