6 ms·

"Sadly this probably means 3 things are going to happen in the next 6 months" (Genuine question, not snark). Why "sadly"? Companies, even technical companies,

"Sadly this probably means 3 things are going to happen in the next 6 months" (Genuine question, not snark). Why "sadly"? Companies, even technical companies, get obsolescent and die all the time. Maybe it is just Yahoo's time to go.

fluxquanta 11y ago
I can't speak for chollida1, but for me as an "older millennial" (28) Yahoo was how I came to discover the internet. Between the chats, instant messenger, search before Google, multiplayer games online with strangers (albeit simple ones like chess and poker), and Geocities it was my first taste of the types of things I do online to this day. I think it's okay to mourn a bit for how we remember the company.
- mmsmatt 11y ago
  Yes, those yahoo chess ladder rooms burned through a ton of dial up hours at my house.
- MrApathy 11y ago
  As an even older millennial (35), I have very fond memories of Yahoo. I remember receiving a two-disk copy of Netscape Navigator from a local ISP at a computer show in early 1995 and setting the home-page immediately to Yahoo. At the time I remember seeing hard copies of "The Internet Yellow Pages" at the local Barnes and Noble, but most search was through Yahoo or Alta Vista. Back then AV had several fewer orders of magnitude web pages to crawl and SEO/spam hadn't yet taken off, but even still the AV results weren't always useful. Without page rank or a decent sorting algorithm, I remember often going through pages of results. Yahoo had it all: games, continuously updated stock quotes (at a time when I would look up share prices in the morning's paper, priced to the nearest eighth of a dollar), weather, news, and hand picked results from around the web. It was all I was previously getting from CompuServe/Prodigy, but at no cost. But now I haven't visited Yahoo in years. It's like when your favorite teenage band breaks up. You're a little sad, but you've moved on. The fond memories are for life. Edited to add: we all used a home page back then because tabs hadn't yet been invented, meaning the restore previously opened tabs option that we all use today also didn't exist. One's home page had a much greater importance back then.
  - encoderer 11y ago
    Fwiw, stocks were all priced in 8ths. A few remain that way today. But the newspaper quotes are still a quaint memory regardless.
  - valhalla 11y ago
    I'm a young millennial and even though Google was more or less my first search engine/portal (I used Alta Vista until my 1st grade teacher showed me Google around '99) I also have fond memories of Yahoo!. I won a Final Four bracket against high school classmates on the site's fantasy sports page and knowing nothing about college basketball. I made $150 from that. Even though they clearly made strategic mistakes and Mayer's revival may have been too little too late it's still sad when an "old-school" tech firm goes under, especially one that touched so many lives.
    - late2part 11y ago
      1st grade teacher, 1999. God, I'm old.
  - sirkneeland 11y ago
    Well said. This is my Nokia heartbreak all over again
  - richmarr 11y ago
    > As an even older millennial (35)... cough Dude, give up the skinny jeans :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X "Generation X, commonly abbreviated to Gen X, is the generation born after the Western Post–World War II baby boom. Demographers and commentators use birth dates ranging from the early 1960s to the early 1980s."
    - adenadel 11y ago
      There's no hard generational boundaries. For what it's worth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials "Millennials are the demographic cohort following Generation X. There are no precise dates when the generation starts and end; most researchers and commentators use birth years ranging from the early 1980s to the early 2000s." Someone 35 is on the bubble.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
function_seven 11y ago
That's true, but just like when people die—even when it's their time—it can be sad. I haven't used Yahoo in months, but like my sibling comment, it was a large part of introducing me to the web and what was possible.
potatolicious 11y ago
Agree with the others re: our first experiences on the internet. But even now Yahoo is still hanging on to some valuable things we're likely to lose in this change. I'm still a heavy user of Flickr for example - and though many others have tried, it's still IMO the best photography community out there (sorry 500px). It's been a perennial money-loser for Yahoo, kept around because what self-respecting tech giant doesn't have a photo hosting service? I fear with this spinoff we're seeing the end days for that product.
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  I'll agree with flickr having a lot of good photography, but did they actually fix the community? When I used it, all I remember is that 90% of comments were sparkling banners saying "YOUR PHOTO HAS BEEN AWARTED BEST FLICKR OCEAN SUNSET AWARD MAY 2010! CLICK HERE TO JOIN OUR GROUP! JOIN JOIN JOIN!" to the point where it interfered with anyone trying to have an actual conversation. Which was a shame because outside of the enormous volume of spam they had a pretty good thing going.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    I just tired of most of the community aspect of flickr aside from folks I already knew IRL. I found a lot of groupie-ism and, as you note, group stuff that was at least spam-ish. As with other things about flickr, I guess I'm not really sure what the "right" flickr looks like and how you achieve that at profitable scale. And, to be honest, I've never had a lot of interest in community photo meetings and so forth locally either.
    - wlesieutre 11y ago
      True, I doubt it's possible to have much of a community at the scale that Flickr is aiming for. You can do it with a niche little photography site, but anything operating at mass-market sizes will eventually turn into a lot of people spamming groups and internet jokes at each other because that sort of behavior feeds on itself and gets you more active users to generate money from. I hadn't checked it out recently, but it looks like they're still doing fine as far as having a ton of great photos posted. As long as the "community" aspects don't bug you, maybe it's a winning strategy? OTOH I have no idea if they're profitable or not.

fluxquanta 11y ago

I can't speak for chollida1, but for me as an "older millennial" (28) Yahoo was how I came to discover the internet. Between the chats, instant messenger, search before Google, multiplayer games online with strangers (albeit simple ones like chess and poker), and Geocities it was my first taste of the types of things I do online to this day. I think it's okay to mourn a bit for how we remember the company.

mmsmatt 11y ago
Yes, those yahoo chess ladder rooms burned through a ton of dial up hours at my house.
MrApathy 11y ago
As an even older millennial (35), I have very fond memories of Yahoo. I remember receiving a two-disk copy of Netscape Navigator from a local ISP at a computer show in early 1995 and setting the home-page immediately to Yahoo. At the time I remember seeing hard copies of "The Internet Yellow Pages" at the local Barnes and Noble, but most search was through Yahoo or Alta Vista. Back then AV had several fewer orders of magnitude web pages to crawl and SEO/spam hadn't yet taken off, but even still the AV results weren't always useful. Without page rank or a decent sorting algorithm, I remember often going through pages of results. Yahoo had it all: games, continuously updated stock quotes (at a time when I would look up share prices in the morning's paper, priced to the nearest eighth of a dollar), weather, news, and hand picked results from around the web. It was all I was previously getting from CompuServe/Prodigy, but at no cost. But now I haven't visited Yahoo in years. It's like when your favorite teenage band breaks up. You're a little sad, but you've moved on. The fond memories are for life. Edited to add: we all used a home page back then because tabs hadn't yet been invented, meaning the restore previously opened tabs option that we all use today also didn't exist. One's home page had a much greater importance back then.
- encoderer 11y ago
  Fwiw, stocks were all priced in 8ths. A few remain that way today. But the newspaper quotes are still a quaint memory regardless.
- valhalla 11y ago
  I'm a young millennial and even though Google was more or less my first search engine/portal (I used Alta Vista until my 1st grade teacher showed me Google around '99) I also have fond memories of Yahoo!. I won a Final Four bracket against high school classmates on the site's fantasy sports page and knowing nothing about college basketball. I made $150 from that. Even though they clearly made strategic mistakes and Mayer's revival may have been too little too late it's still sad when an "old-school" tech firm goes under, especially one that touched so many lives.
  - late2part 11y ago
    1st grade teacher, 1999. God, I'm old.
- sirkneeland 11y ago
  Well said. This is my Nokia heartbreak all over again
- richmarr 11y ago
  > As an even older millennial (35)... cough Dude, give up the skinny jeans :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X "Generation X, commonly abbreviated to Gen X, is the generation born after the Western Post–World War II baby boom. Demographers and commentators use birth dates ranging from the early 1960s to the early 1980s."
  - adenadel 11y ago
    There's no hard generational boundaries. For what it's worth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials "Millennials are the demographic cohort following Generation X. There are no precise dates when the generation starts and end; most researchers and commentators use birth years ranging from the early 1980s to the early 2000s." Someone 35 is on the bubble.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

function_seven 11y ago

That's true, but just like when people die—even when it's their time—it can be sad. I haven't used Yahoo in months, but like my sibling comment, it was a large part of introducing me to the web and what was possible.

potatolicious 11y ago

Agree with the others re: our first experiences on the internet. But even now Yahoo is still hanging on to some valuable things we're likely to lose in this change. I'm still a heavy user of Flickr for example - and though many others have tried, it's still IMO the best photography community out there (sorry 500px). It's been a perennial money-loser for Yahoo, kept around because what self-respecting tech giant doesn't have a photo hosting service? I fear with this spinoff we're seeing the end days for that product.

wlesieutre 11y ago
I'll agree with flickr having a lot of good photography, but did they actually fix the community? When I used it, all I remember is that 90% of comments were sparkling banners saying "YOUR PHOTO HAS BEEN AWARTED BEST FLICKR OCEAN SUNSET AWARD MAY 2010! CLICK HERE TO JOIN OUR GROUP! JOIN JOIN JOIN!" to the point where it interfered with anyone trying to have an actual conversation. Which was a shame because outside of the enormous volume of spam they had a pretty good thing going.
- ghaff 11y ago
  I just tired of most of the community aspect of flickr aside from folks I already knew IRL. I found a lot of groupie-ism and, as you note, group stuff that was at least spam-ish. As with other things about flickr, I guess I'm not really sure what the "right" flickr looks like and how you achieve that at profitable scale. And, to be honest, I've never had a lot of interest in community photo meetings and so forth locally either.
  - wlesieutre 11y ago
    True, I doubt it's possible to have much of a community at the scale that Flickr is aiming for. You can do it with a niche little photography site, but anything operating at mass-market sizes will eventually turn into a lot of people spamming groups and internet jokes at each other because that sort of behavior feeds on itself and gets you more active users to generate money from. I hadn't checked it out recently, but it looks like they're still doing fine as far as having a ton of great photos posted. As long as the "community" aspects don't bug you, maybe it's a winning strategy? OTOH I have no idea if they're profitable or not.