7 ms·

Yahoo should be split up into lot's of possibly good companies and stop trying to be a weird unsuccessful monolith. Then it might have a change of growing. F

Yahoo should be split up into lot's of possibly good companies and stop trying to be a weird unsuccessful monolith. Then it might have a change of growing. For example, when I worked on the Yahoo! homepage we made about 20 or 30 amazing modules (including personally implementing half of Facebook's functionality in a module). All of these modules were removed because people were actually using them and consequently the rest of the Yahoo! network didn't get the expected foot fall from the homepage. Yahoo! as a company has been exploring a local maxima for a while and there is no way for them to get out of it until they accept some pretty huge short term losses. Artificial foot fall onto properties from the network prevents them needing to be the best of breed; just being on the Yahoo network allows them to be moderately successful businesses.

btown 11y ago
> removed because people were actually using them Wait, so Yahoo leadership was optimizing against user engagement? Sure, they may not be monetized as well as other parts of the network, but that seems like a ridiculously shortsighted decision. At this point, Yahoo's only growth case is if it starts to gain mindshare, not just reapportioning the eyeballs they already have...
- andy_ppp 11y ago
  Yep! "Make something <strike>people want</strike> as much short term money as possible".
- gcb0 11y ago
  the other teams probably made a point that by showing your emails on the front page the user would not have to click the ymail link and thus print two extra ads. hence losing money. what they get instead is less users overtime and lose progressively more. but hey, someone did his job of driving ads up that quarter.
gcb0 11y ago
your argument is to weaken and possible kill 100 small units. while Yahoo is now killing itself by having divisions fight for the same money, your argument will only make them die faster. as they will lose their only advantage. what they need to do is to see the profit as a whole. it's peanut butter manifest STILL. another example is how the team showing native ads (click bait ads disguised as news items) is making a killing... buy they don't realise it is the exact money that left their regular ad business while costing them 1. maintaining yet another ad platform and sales 2. driving away users with words ads. in the end, they probably gave lots of bonuses to the team in the new product that is making them lose money, and probably layd off a few people in the old ad business that's would keep giving them the exact same money without the new costs.
- andy_ppp 11y ago
  >>> your argument is to weaken and possible kill 100 small units. Er, sink or swim? >>> while Yahoo is now killing itself by having divisions fight for the same money, your argument will only make them die faster. as they will lose their only advantage. They will never make their properties good enough while relying on network effects. They need organic traffic by being the best of breed not by being just another part of Yahoo! >>> what they need to do is to see the profit as a whole. I don't agree. Split them up and let each division stand on it's own or die. They can still live on Yahoo.com, just all profits and divisions are separate and smaller. >>> it's peanut butter manifest STILL. Years old, I can't even remember what this was about. >>> another example is how the team showing native ads (click bait ads disguised as news items) is making a killing... buy they don't realise it is the exact money that left their regular ad business while costing them 1. maintaining yet another ad platform and sales 2. driving away users with words ads. in the end, they probably gave lots of bonuses to the team in the new product that is making them lose money, and probably layd off a few people in the old ad business that's would keep giving them the exact same money without the new costs. Not sure about any of this?
  - gcb0 11y ago
    > >>> your argument is to weaken and possible kill 100 small units. > Er, sink or swim? i expressed badly. what i meant was no Yahoo piece can survive alone. splitting them will kill them all. it's like separating Gmail, search and ads from Google. all you gonna do is kill it. read "kill all smaller units" on my original comment pls. Yahoo only strength is it's size and what it can pull off because of it. which is not being used at all, because they keep running after their tail for month by month revenue. now ask yourself: why investor would push so hard for month by month revenue on a stock that don't pay dividend?? doesn't it smell bad for you? it should. if they weren't trying to crash Yahoo, they would be 1. driving the company to make bold bets and win big on share valorization; or 2. accepting the buy back Jerry was driving a while ago. but no, the investors want 3: crash and burn to get BABA free money.
    - argonaut 11y ago
msellout 11y ago
I've seen this happen at a few companies organized as fiefdoms, each portion of the site under a different VP with a separate P&L report. Something good for one will get destroyed if it hurts another, whether or not the feature was net positive.
dhimes 11y ago
I was actually a huge fan of that page. It was quite configurable with (almost) everything I wanted to start my day. I set up my business stuff there. Now I am shitting bricks!

btown 11y ago

> removed because people were actually using them Wait, so Yahoo leadership was optimizing against user engagement? Sure, they may not be monetized as well as other parts of the network, but that seems like a ridiculously shortsighted decision. At this point, Yahoo's only growth case is if it starts to gain mindshare, not just reapportioning the eyeballs they already have...

andy_ppp 11y ago
Yep! "Make something <strike>people want</strike> as much short term money as possible".
gcb0 11y ago
the other teams probably made a point that by showing your emails on the front page the user would not have to click the ymail link and thus print two extra ads. hence losing money. what they get instead is less users overtime and lose progressively more. but hey, someone did his job of driving ads up that quarter.

gcb0 11y ago

your argument is to weaken and possible kill 100 small units. while Yahoo is now killing itself by having divisions fight for the same money, your argument will only make them die faster. as they will lose their only advantage. what they need to do is to see the profit as a whole. it's peanut butter manifest STILL. another example is how the team showing native ads (click bait ads disguised as news items) is making a killing... buy they don't realise it is the exact money that left their regular ad business while costing them 1. maintaining yet another ad platform and sales 2. driving away users with words ads. in the end, they probably gave lots of bonuses to the team in the new product that is making them lose money, and probably layd off a few people in the old ad business that's would keep giving them the exact same money without the new costs.

andy_ppp 11y ago
>>> your argument is to weaken and possible kill 100 small units. Er, sink or swim? >>> while Yahoo is now killing itself by having divisions fight for the same money, your argument will only make them die faster. as they will lose their only advantage. They will never make their properties good enough while relying on network effects. They need organic traffic by being the best of breed not by being just another part of Yahoo! >>> what they need to do is to see the profit as a whole. I don't agree. Split them up and let each division stand on it's own or die. They can still live on Yahoo.com, just all profits and divisions are separate and smaller. >>> it's peanut butter manifest STILL. Years old, I can't even remember what this was about. >>> another example is how the team showing native ads (click bait ads disguised as news items) is making a killing... buy they don't realise it is the exact money that left their regular ad business while costing them 1. maintaining yet another ad platform and sales 2. driving away users with words ads. in the end, they probably gave lots of bonuses to the team in the new product that is making them lose money, and probably layd off a few people in the old ad business that's would keep giving them the exact same money without the new costs. Not sure about any of this?
- gcb0 11y ago
  > >>> your argument is to weaken and possible kill 100 small units. > Er, sink or swim? i expressed badly. what i meant was no Yahoo piece can survive alone. splitting them will kill them all. it's like separating Gmail, search and ads from Google. all you gonna do is kill it. read "kill all smaller units" on my original comment pls. Yahoo only strength is it's size and what it can pull off because of it. which is not being used at all, because they keep running after their tail for month by month revenue. now ask yourself: why investor would push so hard for month by month revenue on a stock that don't pay dividend?? doesn't it smell bad for you? it should. if they weren't trying to crash Yahoo, they would be 1. driving the company to make bold bets and win big on share valorization; or 2. accepting the buy back Jerry was driving a while ago. but no, the investors want 3: crash and burn to get BABA free money.
  - argonaut 11y ago

msellout 11y ago

I've seen this happen at a few companies organized as fiefdoms, each portion of the site under a different VP with a separate P&L report. Something good for one will get destroyed if it hurts another, whether or not the feature was net positive.

dhimes 11y ago

I was actually a huge fan of that page. It was quite configurable with (almost) everything I wanted to start my day. I set up my business stuff there. Now I am shitting bricks!