It's less about how the world saw Yahoo than how Yahoo saw itself. They felt that Microsoft's position in technology / the browser was too dominant, so they piv

It's less about how the world saw Yahoo than how Yahoo saw itself. They felt that Microsoft's position in technology / the browser was too dominant, so they pivoted towards the "discovery" experience. Problem was, Google provided a better experience by approaching discovery as a technology company and was able to build a sustainable market advantage as a result. Yahoo also never really sold anything. They were a publisher before there was a good marketplace for online ads. IBM was able to pivot because they had an established sales channel they could mine for dollars; but Yahoo's sales channels never got built out to the same extent before Google came in with a new model and obliterated them.