I think the greatest example of what Yahoo! could have been is Yahoo! Japan. They own the auction space and as part of the juggernaut SoftBank group pretty muc

I think the greatest example of what Yahoo! could have been is Yahoo! Japan. They own the auction space and as part of the juggernaut SoftBank group pretty much own a big part of the space (even more if you count the spun off Soft Bank Investments). It's sad that lack of vision and truly ingrained technical innovation prevented the company from truly realizing the advantages of being a first mover in the space but they sure had a nice run for what started as a collection of links.