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The article ignores the stories that turn out differently. For example, I noticed whereonearth in the list of acquisitions. I happen to know that their techno
by kscaldef 16y ago
The article ignores the stories that turn out differently. For example, I noticed whereonearth in the list of acquisitions. I happen to know that their technology was nearly immediately used to start making money for Yahoo (because I integrated it into parts of the ad serving systems). It also was probably behind the "platform technology that enabled things like geolocation open API" that Upcoming enjoyed.
The time cutoff also leaves out the Overture, Inktomi, Altavista trio which made a ton of money for Yahoo, let them build a search engine on par with Google, and fueled significant growth of the company.
Finally, the article also ignores the fact than many, many internally developed products (of any internet company) have a lifespan of under 5 years.
- neilk 16y agoI am quoted in this article and I totally agree with you. It has to do with the nature of the acquisition. As you say, WhereOnEarth was killer technology, easy to integrate into everything that Yahoo did. The "Class of 2005" startups that Yahoo acquired were not about technology, they were about having a different relationship with the users and creating common resources (photo library, tagged URLs, event information...). That's a much more problematic kind of innovation for a company like Yahoo. It was alien to how Yahoo worked, and for many groups it was even a kind of threat.