4 ms·
On day one they were the kings of the early web, but they were playing catch up from day two, because the original thing they made their names on was intrinsica
by JulianMorrison 8y ago
On day one they were the kings of the early web, but they were playing catch up from day two, because the original thing they made their names on was intrinsically useless as soon as the web got too big to enumerate - in about 1998. Since then their business has consisted of hanging things off the side of things hung off the side of things... and trying to sell advertising. Every good tool they made was a loss leader, orphaned from conception by the economic fact that doing it better would bring in no more revenue. They were never capable of being Google.
- wolco 8y agoThey were but run by marketers in the early days and poorly run near the end. They had so many chances but poor leadership.
- goobynight 8y agoWell, that's just looking at what happened and not the capabilities. They could have paid talent and they had a ton of traffic. You can basically build whatever from there.
- JulianMorrison 8y agoNah, missing the point. They had plenty of talent to build things. They didn't want to. Building things was a loss and a waste. If they were good enough to hold a large mass of people inside the eyeball-farm - then they were good enough. They never had Google's attitude that "what helps the web helps us".