I 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

I 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.