10 ms·

Yahoo Crosses The Line

525 points by barrynolan 15y ago

smeg 15y ago
Yep. I don't even use/like Facebook, but I just deleted my 10 year old Yahoo account in protest (in truth it was only a secondary account after Google, but still).
- IgorPartola 15y ago
  This is why I use my own domain for my primary email address. If Google decides to pull some kind of crap on me, I can always ditch them without having to write that silly "My new email is" message to all my contacts.
  - maximveksler 15y ago
    I use a personal email domain on gmail[1] as well. But for a different reason: It allows a "catch all" email, so I register on every site as <sitedomain.com>@vekslers.org and have my account act as a catch all sink. This allows me to both filter out spamming sources and trace back who leaked my email address to 3rd party sources. This approach is a pivot on the name+tag@domain.com email tagging which most js form validations devs are unaware of it being a legal email syntax and thus do not allow. This relives me of the need to worry to post my email address, which is news.ycombinator.com_3698017@vekslers.org out in the open (true emails are very much welcome). [1] http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html
    - Jasber 15y ago
      This sounds like a good setup (and workaround the name+tag issue). Can regular Gmail handle a catch all or is this a paid feature?
      - icebraining 15y ago
        The free Google Apps has catch-all, yes.
    - lusr 15y ago
      I've been doing this for a while. I've caught out 3 companies selling (or leaking, presumably via an employee) my email address. In one case they claimed they'd do something and I never heard a followup (but received no further spam, which could mean the boss was in on it); in the second case the company never bothered replying (Topaz Labs, pretty disappointed with them) and I still receive spam directed towards the address; in the 3rd case I didn't bother doing anything because of the previous 2 experiences - I realised it didn't help much except in the extreme case of being spammed heavily, which so far hasn't actually happened.
    - gizzlon 15y ago
      I wonder how hard this is to set up if you run your own mail server.. should be pretty easy.. Do you get a lot of spam to addresses like admin@domain ?
      - wpietri 15y ago
        I used to run a catchall and the problem wasn't addresses like admin@; it was popular names. Turns out some spammers just take a list of common email local parts and email those names at every domain they can find. There's a silver lining, though. When I took down my catchall I took the 100 most popular guessed addresses and routed them all to my Bayesian trainer. It was a big help with certain sorts of spam.
- rplnt 15y ago
  > I just deleted my 10 year old Yahoo account in protest From Apple device?
tzaman 15y ago
Their actions just show how desperate they are. Bye bye Yahoo! and thanks for the fish.
barrynolan 15y ago
US Patent 7406501 ... "Conversion of an instant message to an e-mail message" WTF...Is that it?
- IgorPartola 15y ago
  Google does that! Quick Yahoo! sue them!
  - Andrex 15y ago
    Google vs. Yahoo! would be even bloodier than Google vs. Oracle has been.
- klez 15y ago
  IMHO the linked article misunderstood what this is all about. I think it's more the "Reply to this thread by replying to this email" facebook does when you receive a message notification.
- bbrizzi 15y ago
  If you consider that an e-mail is a type of instant message, it makes even less sense.
- pja 15y ago
  Read the claims. http://www.google.com/patents/US7406501?printsec=claims&dq=7406501#v=onepage&q=7406501&f=false http://www.google.com/patents/US7406501?printsec=claims&... The abstract doesn't define the patent. The claims are what defines the patent, in combination with the notes in the patent file which can often limit the claims even further. Yahoo is claiming a specific method of seamlessly converting an instant message communication into an email one, not the general concept. Claim 1 narrows the claims from that general case immediately.
- rplnt 15y ago
  Sounds like something from Apple's portfolio.
pagehub 15y ago
Totally agree, compete on innovation - not by patent troling! Goodbye Yahoo!, shame you decided to disgrace yourself in such a way.
- polymatter 15y ago
  The problem is innovation is measured as number of patents filed. Investors who want more innovation, judge how innovative a company is by number of patents. More patents -> more innovative. And so that's what managers optimize for. The program is that is a ridiculously crude measure. Like measuring programmer output by lines of code, this idea that measuring innovation at such a micro level even makes sense, needs to die.
- rplnt 15y ago
  They saw Apple going away with that over and over again and thought "What the hell, let's do it".
viggity 15y ago
I really don't like saying this, but here it goes: Don't hate the player, hate the game. We need real, substantive patent reform in this country.
- nodemaker 15y ago
  When the player is a huge corporation consisting of numerous layers of management, it is very hard not to hate them. This player will most likely also lobby aggressively to thwart any attempts at reforming the patent system since it is one of its few remaining sources of revenue.
- sparkie 15y ago
  Absolutely. It's easy to bash at Yahoo, but we can't forget that while Facebook (and many other players, including Yahoo) are using one hand undermine the "intellectual property" of other companies, they're using their other hand to try and protect their own IP using the same laws. Take this absurd Facebook patent as an example >System and method for dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network (US2008040673). While the situation is different, as Facebook aren't suing anyone (yet), we can imagine if the roles were reversed, the story might be a little different. Why else would they file for patents if their intent wasn't to defend "their ideas." If we're calling out Yahoo's patents as junk, we should be doing the same for facebook and the rest, otherwise we're turning a bad system of "who dunnit first" into an even worse one, a popularity contest.
  - simonw 15y ago
    > Why else would they file for patents if their intent wasn't to defend "their ideas." As the original article said, most SV web companies claim to file patents as a defensive measure - so if they get sued by someone else, they can hit back. Suing first is extremely bad form. > If we're calling out Yahoo's patents as junk, we should be doing the same for facebook and the rest I don't see anyone saying that Facebook's patents are fine and Yahoo!'s are junk - Yahoo! are being criticised because they're attempting to enforce their junk patents. If Facebook attempted to force theirs they would get exactly the same flack for it.
CPlatypus 15y ago
The OP wouldn't seem quite so hypocritical if VCs didn't put immense pressure on startups to generate patents. Don't tell me those patents are supposed to be purely defensive, either. They were supposed to stake out a bit of technical turf, just like Yahoo's doing. I'm not saying it's right, but I don't think much of demanding patent generation on one hand and then complaining about their use on the other. If you want to oppose software patents - and you should - then be consistent about it. Either forego them entirely, or require via contract that they be used only defensively. The latter is the approach taken by my employer, BTW, who also spends more money than anyone else fighting software patents. As schizophrenic as that strategy might seem, I believe it's the right one for the crazy world we live in.
- corin_ 15y ago
  It's quite possible that Fred's actions do make him a hypocrite here, but can you show that they do, rather than waving your hand at him and calling him a VC?
  - CPlatypus 15y ago
    His blog title is "A VC" plus right at the top of the page it says "Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures" so yeah, I think I was on pretty firm ground there.
    - JoachimSchipper 15y ago
      There is no doubt that Fred Wilson is a VC. You haven't shown that he pushes startups to apply for frivolous patents, though.
      - CPlatypus 15y ago
        No, sorry, I'm not in the room at other people's startups when they do that. What I can do, however, is look at the list of investments at Union Square Ventures where he's a principal. Then I can find patents and applications for founders and VPs at Etsy, Twilio, GetGlue, and others. I've probably been at more startups than most in this thread, and I've been under that pressure myself, so I know exactly how that happens. Do I know Fred was involved here? No. Does it seem likely? Yes. He sure doesn't seem to take a strong stance against the practice, does he?
bambax 15y ago
> I used to care about that company for some reason That's the strangest part. I never found Yahoo useful for anything (except Douglas Crockford, but he could have been employed anywhere).
- bryanlarsen 15y ago
  They were useful for navigating the web between 94 and 96 or so. They then proceeded to acquire a few sites which were also useful at one point in time, (Flickr et al), although they do seem pretty good at driving such sites into irrelevancy.
- hessenwolf 15y ago
  Their public finance pages are the best I have found (until some time later this year when we release, that is)
- icebraining 15y ago
  Yahoo! Pipes is extremely useful.
  - frou_dh 15y ago
    Hell yeah. Very cool service. I mainly use it to correct strangeness in sites' RSS offerings. For example, BBC iPlayer offers feeds for channels but not per show (?!), and Penny Arcade doesn't offer a feed for just the comic without the news posts.
  - bambax 15y ago
    I did try that and found it not very consistent; plus you never know when it's going to be discontinued.
- AznHisoka 15y ago
  I actually like Yahoo News for some reason. Some of the stories they feature in the front page makes me want to click through and read it when I'm bored.
  - 15y ago
cs702 15y ago
This title is unnecessarily sensational. Why not use the actual title of the post ("Yahoo! Crosses the Line")?
- arturadib 15y ago
  It conveys the tone of the post much more than the original title. And those are Fred's actual closing words. I say this title is spot-on.
- barrynolan 15y ago
  I did consider the title, and was about to go with the original. Fred is one of the best writers out there - insight, humor, compassion, humility, honesty. I thought his closing remarks really captured his rare but real venom at the shakedown. Nothing more than that.
  - cs702 15y ago
    barrynolan, Thanks. Now that I understand your reasoning, I have no problem with the title. FWIW, I wish I could delete my comment, but unfortunately that's no longer possible.
michaelw 15y ago
I'm in the mood to pick nits this morning. The article links to the description of the patents http://paidcontent.org/article/419-meet-the-10-patents-yahoo-is-using-to-sue-facebook/ http://paidcontent.org/article/419-meet-the-10-patents-yahoo... and tries to summarize each one in "plain English." > Control for enabling a user to preview display of selected > content based on another user’s authorization level (Filed > 2005, Issued 2009) > In plain English: Share an item only with selected friends This is actually about a preview of what a given user (friend) would see. The reason software patents suck so hard is because for every 10,000 totally bogus patents there's one that when you read it makes you think, wow, that really is an invention.
JVIDEL 15y ago
TBH it would be a true douche move if we were in say 2006, but right now FB is worth almost ten times more than Yahoo, so who cares? they can either buy Yahoo or even sue it into oblivion. Is not that crazy to assume this may actually be a last-resort strategy to sell Yahoo once and for all. Most agree Yang dropped the ball when he refused MSFT's offer.
- edanm 15y ago
  The reason for the timing is because of the IPO. Yahoo! is using this as a way to make Facebook desperate to settle, so that their pricing is higher during the IPO.
  - JVIDEL 15y ago
    That too
PaulHoule 15y ago
The close analogy, for me, was Oracle's attempt to shake down Google. Patents are a game that's a lot like Poker. I couldn't blame any startup for accumulating a patent portfolio because that's something of economic value -- it could help an acquisition because a larger company would like to put together a broad portfolio. So long as you can get value out of it that way, it's all roses. Once you get to a lawsuit, it's ugly, largely because the result is unpredictable -- if people settle out of court you get the desired result, but if your opponent can fight you to the end, you're very likely to end up with invalidated patents. That, of course, is why companies like this broad portfolios -- if there are ten patents involved, it's much more likely something will stick.
shareme 15y ago
And how many worthless patents doe USV firms have? And where was Fred when MS started its shit? Oh effing come one now, lets have a honest conversation Fred instead of some lame miss-direction..
- fredwilson 15y ago
  i've been pretty loud and vocal on the anti-software patent thing for quite a while now
zyb09 15y ago
Well I hope he doesn't use any Apple products then. That would be pretty hypocritical.
- funkah 15y ago
  Good point, Apple is literally the only other company that has ever filed a patent lawsuit.
  - tmuir 15y ago
    Apple sits diametrically opposed to Yahoo in the overall internet zeitgeist. Apple is the hot girl everyone gives a pass to, and Yahoo is the band nerd that everyone laughs at.
    - meric 15y ago
      It used to be the other way around, say, circa 1997.
- fredwilson 15y ago
  i called Apple evil on stage at a conference a few years ago http://venturebeat.com/2010/07/21/fred-wilson/ http://venturebeat.com/2010/07/21/fred-wilson/
joering2 15y ago
I really don't understand what their weak market position has to do with this lawsuit. If Yahoo! believes Facebook violated their patents, they will sue. They _should_ sue. They do it now because apparently that's the way new CEO does the business. I can't blame him, can you? Now, whether FW post was an emotional rant or he has any business saying what he said, hard to judge. But I read his blog for a while now and don't recall last time stumbling at such an emotional rant. Further, whether patent system needs "reform in this country" is relevant to the fact that one part believes other part infringe. If Yahoo!, Facebook or anyone else feels someone infringe and ended up saying "oh they system is broken lets wait until its fixed", then they may as well wait another 75 years. I say good things can come up from this, especially if Yahoo! loses. Facebook is claiming that what they are being sued over was "nothing new" at that time. Cool! Have them win. Next time someone build highly successful social website with human connections done based on request/approve/reject, and Facebook will try to shut them down based on infringe of one of their hundreds of patents, you can say: "oh, none of this was new at the time of Facebook: MySpace, Fridndster, etc. Here, I am using Facebook own rules - they win, I need to win too".
- guard-of-terra 15y ago
  No it should not. It's as if you said, if Yahoo has a gun, it should fire at Facebook. Tech companies do not make their living by exploiting their patents directly (as e.g. pharma companies do). They make living from advertising to their userbase. They do patent some things they use to keep and monetize that usebase, but there is no direct relation. So: Of course they should not sue "by default". It just isn't a winning strategy for them.
  - joering2 15y ago
    so as long as I do a business in tech, I should not care about anyones patents (or IP in that matter) -- just open the patent book and look what I can steal (sorry: take) from others and use it to build my own tech company. Okay then.
    - guard-of-terra 15y ago
markokocic 15y ago
Well, I don't agree with the author. Why would it be ok for Yahoo and other big companies to use patents "only" to threaten small shops and keep the status quo? Let them fight between eachother, let Yahoo sue Facebook sue Gooogle sue Microsoft sue Apple sue HTC sue Samsung sue Sony sue Oracle sue ... let everyone sue everyone else. Let the total war on patents begin. Let the big players burn a ton of money on pointless legal battles. And then, and only then, they might push for a patent reform which will level playing field for all players, including new ones.
- shasta 15y ago
  Right, because that's what they're going to push through: legislation that levels the playing field.
- michaelw 15y ago
  This is already what happens. Changes have reinforced and will further reinforce the status quo and ensure that only the mega corporations will be able to play.
bergie 15y ago
The only Yahoo! property that I care about is Flickr, which I also pay for. It would be nice to find an alternative. So: suggestions for a social photo archive service which is reliable enough to be the "master copy" of my pictures, and preferably has Flickr import ability?
- pavs 15y ago
  imgur. They are not stagnant, improving all the time. Not as big as flickr, but big enough and reliable. I used both imgur pro and flickr but now I only use flickr because I am too lazy to switch.
- logic 15y ago
  Take a look at 500px.com; it seems a large swath of the higher-end of the community is migrating there. At this point, it's probably where I'm going to land with my archive if I have to move. Unfortunately, I don't believe they have the ability to automatically import your Flickr photos.
  - bergie 15y ago
    I was looking at the API, and it seems that import would be quite easy. But since they lack tagging and some other Flickr-like features, the import would have to be slightly lossy.
lrobb 15y ago
OP: "Yahoo! thinks they can bully Internet newcomers ..." Wait... Is he still talking about the facebook lawsuit?
Porter_423 15y ago
The only reason for taking such decision is the money.We have noticed the same thing in the past.
Teef 15y ago
I suppose we all knew this day would come from Yahoo. The start of where lawyers take over the company and product make a steady march to complete crap. Pretty common pattern for companies that can no longer compete (SCO anyone). It is sad Yahoo still have a great brand and could reinvent itself. This entire thing is nonsense but I guess to try and squeeze some more revenue for the share holders is what they are obligated to do. I miss the old Yahoo.
badclient 15y ago
Today it's Yahoo, tomorrow Facebook.
mrgreenfur 15y ago
Facebook isn't a 'newcomer' and Yahoo! wouldn't bother suing anyone that wasn't already a giant.
polshaw 15y ago
I disagree with the patent situation as much as anyone, but that was massively melodramatic (and almost completely lacking any substance).
- fredwilson 15y ago
  it was a rant. you are right.
Hoff 15y ago
Fred Being Fred aside... Yahoo! could be aiming to be acquired by Facebook or Google. Assuming the patents involved are tenable, this looks rather like a viable reverse-acquisition strategy.
- wavephorm 15y ago
  But this really isn't the way to make any friends. I'd be surprised if anyone wants to do business with people like this ever again.
  - tmuir 15y ago
    Who manufactures the memory in Apple iOS devices? Samsung.
  - CamperBob 15y ago
    Corporations are like nations: they don't have friends, they have interests.
- rooshdi 15y ago
  You're kidding, right? It's kind of hard to tell with all these trolls nowadays.
jpdoctor 15y ago
I'd love to hear Fred talk about how Twitter is preparing, because it's a good guess that they're next. Probably the reason for this post in fact.
iamgopal 15y ago
I wish I would have choose law instead of software.
rdl 15y ago
Sounds like it is finally time to migrate off flickr. I wonder what the best options are -- self hosting of full res, plus FB Photos for social? Is Picasa worthwhile?
- pullo 15y ago
  same sentiment here. I've been using y! mail for a decade. Y! 'wall streetish' behavior is a good incentive to sever all ties. I am also certain , lot of their portal traffic comes when users are redirected to the portal home page when users sign off their ymail accnts.
  - rdl 15y ago
    I feel slightly more disgusted than usual because I bought YHOO stock a while ago, because it was cheap (when factoring in Asian assets, etc.). I had hopes the new CEO would try to turn Yahoo around. I don't believe in shitty display advertising long-term, but it could be viable for another 5 years. At least, I had confidence he could fire enough Directors and VPs to make Yahoo at least as innovative as eBay (also not a particular paragon in Silicon Valley), and I was hoping Yahoo's boardmembers would start actually acting in the interests of shareholders. I guess I was wrong.
monochromatic 15y ago
This guy doesn't even mention the claims of the patents in suit, so why should I trust his opinion about their merits? If you don't know how to read a patent, you're absolutely not qualified to make pronouncements like this: > None of them represent unique and new ideas at the time of the filing. I supect they all can be thrown out over prior art if Facebook takes the time and effort to do that. Also, even the article that he links to just quotes the damn abstracts of the patents, as if that has anything to do with what they cover. Honestly people, I know you like to rail against software patents and the patent system in general... but educate yourselves first, or you just come off looking ignorant to anyone who knows the first thing about patents.
- carbocation 15y ago
  Far more valuable than this contrarian response would be an analysis of the claims on their merits, since you allude to a knowledge of the subject. Care to share?
  - monochromatic 15y ago
    I haven't read the patents myself either, and I'm not willing to put in the time to pore over 10 patents just for the sake of curiosity and karma on HN. It just irritates me when I see such ignorant rage.
- moldbug 15y ago
  Can we bring Hitler into the conversation? No one needs to be "educated" in the intricate and fascinating political and economic power dynamics of the Third Reich to have a valid opinion about Hitler. All they need to know is that Hitler killed the Jews and was evil. Similarly, no one posting here needs to know anything about the technical details of patentology, a subject in which I suspect you're quite expert, to know that the patent system is evil and needs to be eradicated from the earth - like Hitler. Does that make you a bad person? Fact is, a lot of good people worked for Hitler. But at a certain point, they all had to reevaluate their career choices. I can only hope you'll do the same.
  - 15y ago
justmyopinion 15y ago
I have no problem with someone being down on ridiculous patents. And think it is great that Joel stood up for Fred to say Fred isn't being hypocritical. However, i think that Fred should have dialed it back a bit before posting. He was trying to get noticed and Yahoo is an easy target as it has been sinking like the Titanic for a few years. But just because it is an easy target doesn't mean you should shoot at it.
ypcx 15y ago
Patent system doesn't need to be reformed. It needs to be flat out abolished. It's a disgrace to the human race. You can't own ideas. Patent system is a form of control, just as is oil, or just as the way the monetary system is run. All these must go, will go.
huhtenberg 15y ago
NB: Yahoo Mail is still an excellent source of widely-accepted disposable anonymous email addresses. If not the only one left.
nileshtrivedi 15y ago
What about Amazon then?
eroach 15y ago
SCO tried this crap to the tune of 45 million. What a stupid use of time and effort.
pedalpete 15y ago
I tried to find an example where Google sued a company for infringing on PageRank, but it doesn't appear that has ever happened. If everyone really just uses patents for the threat of a possible lawsuit, is it still worth having them, even if you hope to never use one?
- sopooneo 15y ago
  Many others have already pointed it out, but how closely it parallels nuclear weapons philosophy is startling.
Rawgawd 15y ago
Well, I'd simply say that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh4jvDsNtEE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh4jvDsNtEE
laconian 15y ago
The engineering soul of the company is being evicted from the body, and now this. They're like the zombie Husks from Mass Effect. :)
larrys 15y ago
The title of this changed from: "They are dead to me. Dead and gone. I hate them now" to: "Yahoo Crosses The Line" Curious about the reason this was done.
- duck 15y ago
  Yeah, I just noticed that as well. Once something goes live you have the right to change it, but I would leave an update on why.
shapeshed 15y ago
This is like watching a once great sports team play in a rusty, deserted stadium. This hurts so much because Yahoo helped make the a web a beautiful, free place where humans could create and communicate. They once understood that but are now reduced to mugging full pockets in back alleys. Pretty clear the company is being run by stooges and fee chasing lawyers now and is sinking fast.
law 15y ago
Thomas Jefferson's 1788 quote, in a way, portends this: "the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." The dictionary definition of government ("authoritative direction or control") ostensibly extends this to encompass corporations. Patents are merely one of many tactics for corporations gain control; it's nothing new, and it ought to be expected. Notwithstanding the foreseeability of patent warfare, I remain despondent toward "unwritten rules" in American law. Yes, they exist; it's no surprise that defendants in criminal cases who assert their 6th Amendment rights to a speedy trial that they subsequently lose will suffer a heightened penalty. The seminal case on this subject, Bordenkircher v. Hayes, specifically endorses threats of stiffer sentences to entice criminal defendants to waive their right to trial and plead guilty to a lesser offense. One can model this as a game of imperfect information, with society reaping the rewards. So the author's reliance on this de facto "rule not to litigate" is flawed. The real problem arises when companies exclude others from practicing a technology in which that company's property interest is a mere subterfuge. Rarely do companies practice the technologies for which they've secured patent protection, and that brings me to my last Thomas Jefferson quote: A man has a right to use a saw, an axe, a plane, separately; may he not combine their uses on the same piece of wood? He has a right to use his knife to cut his meat, a fork to hold it; may a patentee take from him the right to combine their use on the same subject? Such a law, instead of enlarging our conveniences, as was intended, would most fearfully abridge them, and crowd us by monopolies out of the use of the things we have. However, we should be careful not to criticize the managers of these companies too much: they have a fiduciary duty of care to the corporation. Is there another "unwritten rule" that shareholders of a (struggling) corporation won't launch a derivative suit against the board of directors for failure to assert the corporation's patent rights against an infringing third party? So in my view, the solution isn't at the corporate level; it's at the national level. As such, patent reform should be a national issue addressed by politicians. Patent term length [c|sh]ould be proportional to the research expenses actually incurred. Alternatively, we might want want a "patent abandonment doctrine" that moves to public domain those patents whose rights haven't been enforced (almost like in trademark law). Even still, we might want to wholly abandon the right to transfer or sell patents (and for that matter, all intellectual property) entirely. I haven't researched the ramifications of these potential solutions, so they're offered merely as points for discussion.
joshuahedlund 15y ago
My new hobby: googling abstract website techniques to see what kind of patents I'm violating on a regular basis. Did you know about the patent on mouseover (but not mouseclick!) dropdown menus? http://www.m-cam.com/patently-obvious/intellectual-property-analysis-webvention-llcs-us-pat-no-5251294 http://www.m-cam.com/patently-obvious/intellectual-property-...
- CamperBob 15y ago
  With treble damages, that could turn into an expensive hobby.
marizmelo 15y ago
yawho?

525 points by barrynolan 15y ago

smeg 15y ago

Yep. I don't even use/like Facebook, but I just deleted my 10 year old Yahoo account in protest (in truth it was only a secondary account after Google, but still).

IgorPartola 15y ago
This is why I use my own domain for my primary email address. If Google decides to pull some kind of crap on me, I can always ditch them without having to write that silly "My new email is" message to all my contacts.
- maximveksler 15y ago
  I use a personal email domain on gmail[1] as well. But for a different reason: It allows a "catch all" email, so I register on every site as <sitedomain.com>@vekslers.org and have my account act as a catch all sink. This allows me to both filter out spamming sources and trace back who leaked my email address to 3rd party sources. This approach is a pivot on the name+tag@domain.com email tagging which most js form validations devs are unaware of it being a legal email syntax and thus do not allow. This relives me of the need to worry to post my email address, which is news.ycombinator.com_3698017@vekslers.org out in the open (true emails are very much welcome). [1] http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html
  - Jasber 15y ago
    This sounds like a good setup (and workaround the name+tag issue). Can regular Gmail handle a catch all or is this a paid feature?
    - icebraining 15y ago
      The free Google Apps has catch-all, yes.
  - lusr 15y ago
    I've been doing this for a while. I've caught out 3 companies selling (or leaking, presumably via an employee) my email address. In one case they claimed they'd do something and I never heard a followup (but received no further spam, which could mean the boss was in on it); in the second case the company never bothered replying (Topaz Labs, pretty disappointed with them) and I still receive spam directed towards the address; in the 3rd case I didn't bother doing anything because of the previous 2 experiences - I realised it didn't help much except in the extreme case of being spammed heavily, which so far hasn't actually happened.
  - gizzlon 15y ago
    I wonder how hard this is to set up if you run your own mail server.. should be pretty easy.. Do you get a lot of spam to addresses like admin@domain ?
    - wpietri 15y ago
      I used to run a catchall and the problem wasn't addresses like admin@; it was popular names. Turns out some spammers just take a list of common email local parts and email those names at every domain they can find. There's a silver lining, though. When I took down my catchall I took the 100 most popular guessed addresses and routed them all to my Bayesian trainer. It was a big help with certain sorts of spam.
rplnt 15y ago
> I just deleted my 10 year old Yahoo account in protest From Apple device?

tzaman 15y ago

Their actions just show how desperate they are. Bye bye Yahoo! and thanks for the fish.

barrynolan 15y ago

US Patent 7406501 ... "Conversion of an instant message to an e-mail message" WTF...Is that it?

IgorPartola 15y ago
Google does that! Quick Yahoo! sue them!
- Andrex 15y ago
  Google vs. Yahoo! would be even bloodier than Google vs. Oracle has been.
klez 15y ago
IMHO the linked article misunderstood what this is all about. I think it's more the "Reply to this thread by replying to this email" facebook does when you receive a message notification.
bbrizzi 15y ago
If you consider that an e-mail is a type of instant message, it makes even less sense.
pja 15y ago
Read the claims. http://www.google.com/patents/US7406501?printsec=claims&dq=7406501#v=onepage&q=7406501&f=false http://www.google.com/patents/US7406501?printsec=claims&... The abstract doesn't define the patent. The claims are what defines the patent, in combination with the notes in the patent file which can often limit the claims even further. Yahoo is claiming a specific method of seamlessly converting an instant message communication into an email one, not the general concept. Claim 1 narrows the claims from that general case immediately.
rplnt 15y ago
Sounds like something from Apple's portfolio.

pagehub 15y ago

Totally agree, compete on innovation - not by patent troling! Goodbye Yahoo!, shame you decided to disgrace yourself in such a way.

polymatter 15y ago
The problem is innovation is measured as number of patents filed. Investors who want more innovation, judge how innovative a company is by number of patents. More patents -> more innovative. And so that's what managers optimize for. The program is that is a ridiculously crude measure. Like measuring programmer output by lines of code, this idea that measuring innovation at such a micro level even makes sense, needs to die.
rplnt 15y ago
They saw Apple going away with that over and over again and thought "What the hell, let's do it".

viggity 15y ago

I really don't like saying this, but here it goes: Don't hate the player, hate the game. We need real, substantive patent reform in this country.

nodemaker 15y ago
When the player is a huge corporation consisting of numerous layers of management, it is very hard not to hate them. This player will most likely also lobby aggressively to thwart any attempts at reforming the patent system since it is one of its few remaining sources of revenue.
sparkie 15y ago
Absolutely. It's easy to bash at Yahoo, but we can't forget that while Facebook (and many other players, including Yahoo) are using one hand undermine the "intellectual property" of other companies, they're using their other hand to try and protect their own IP using the same laws. Take this absurd Facebook patent as an example >System and method for dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network (US2008040673). While the situation is different, as Facebook aren't suing anyone (yet), we can imagine if the roles were reversed, the story might be a little different. Why else would they file for patents if their intent wasn't to defend "their ideas." If we're calling out Yahoo's patents as junk, we should be doing the same for facebook and the rest, otherwise we're turning a bad system of "who dunnit first" into an even worse one, a popularity contest.
- simonw 15y ago
  > Why else would they file for patents if their intent wasn't to defend "their ideas." As the original article said, most SV web companies claim to file patents as a defensive measure - so if they get sued by someone else, they can hit back. Suing first is extremely bad form. > If we're calling out Yahoo's patents as junk, we should be doing the same for facebook and the rest I don't see anyone saying that Facebook's patents are fine and Yahoo!'s are junk - Yahoo! are being criticised because they're attempting to enforce their junk patents. If Facebook attempted to force theirs they would get exactly the same flack for it.

CPlatypus 15y ago

The OP wouldn't seem quite so hypocritical if VCs didn't put immense pressure on startups to generate patents. Don't tell me those patents are supposed to be purely defensive, either. They were supposed to stake out a bit of technical turf, just like Yahoo's doing. I'm not saying it's right, but I don't think much of demanding patent generation on one hand and then complaining about their use on the other. If you want to oppose software patents - and you should - then be consistent about it. Either forego them entirely, or require via contract that they be used only defensively. The latter is the approach taken by my employer, BTW, who also spends more money than anyone else fighting software patents. As schizophrenic as that strategy might seem, I believe it's the right one for the crazy world we live in.

corin_ 15y ago
It's quite possible that Fred's actions do make him a hypocrite here, but can you show that they do, rather than waving your hand at him and calling him a VC?
- CPlatypus 15y ago
  His blog title is "A VC" plus right at the top of the page it says "Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures" so yeah, I think I was on pretty firm ground there.
  - JoachimSchipper 15y ago
    There is no doubt that Fred Wilson is a VC. You haven't shown that he pushes startups to apply for frivolous patents, though.
    - CPlatypus 15y ago
      No, sorry, I'm not in the room at other people's startups when they do that. What I can do, however, is look at the list of investments at Union Square Ventures where he's a principal. Then I can find patents and applications for founders and VPs at Etsy, Twilio, GetGlue, and others. I've probably been at more startups than most in this thread, and I've been under that pressure myself, so I know exactly how that happens. Do I know Fred was involved here? No. Does it seem likely? Yes. He sure doesn't seem to take a strong stance against the practice, does he?

bambax 15y ago

> I used to care about that company for some reason That's the strangest part. I never found Yahoo useful for anything (except Douglas Crockford, but he could have been employed anywhere).

bryanlarsen 15y ago
They were useful for navigating the web between 94 and 96 or so. They then proceeded to acquire a few sites which were also useful at one point in time, (Flickr et al), although they do seem pretty good at driving such sites into irrelevancy.
hessenwolf 15y ago
Their public finance pages are the best I have found (until some time later this year when we release, that is)
icebraining 15y ago
Yahoo! Pipes is extremely useful.
- frou_dh 15y ago
  Hell yeah. Very cool service. I mainly use it to correct strangeness in sites' RSS offerings. For example, BBC iPlayer offers feeds for channels but not per show (?!), and Penny Arcade doesn't offer a feed for just the comic without the news posts.
- bambax 15y ago
  I did try that and found it not very consistent; plus you never know when it's going to be discontinued.
AznHisoka 15y ago
I actually like Yahoo News for some reason. Some of the stories they feature in the front page makes me want to click through and read it when I'm bored.
- 15y ago

cs702 15y ago

This title is unnecessarily sensational. Why not use the actual title of the post ("Yahoo! Crosses the Line")?

arturadib 15y ago
It conveys the tone of the post much more than the original title. And those are Fred's actual closing words. I say this title is spot-on.
barrynolan 15y ago
I did consider the title, and was about to go with the original. Fred is one of the best writers out there - insight, humor, compassion, humility, honesty. I thought his closing remarks really captured his rare but real venom at the shakedown. Nothing more than that.
- cs702 15y ago
  barrynolan, Thanks. Now that I understand your reasoning, I have no problem with the title. FWIW, I wish I could delete my comment, but unfortunately that's no longer possible.

michaelw 15y ago

I'm in the mood to pick nits this morning. The article links to the description of the patents http://paidcontent.org/article/419-meet-the-10-patents-yahoo-is-using-to-sue-facebook/ http://paidcontent.org/article/419-meet-the-10-patents-yahoo... and tries to summarize each one in "plain English." > Control for enabling a user to preview display of selected > content based on another user’s authorization level (Filed > 2005, Issued 2009) > In plain English: Share an item only with selected friends This is actually about a preview of what a given user (friend) would see. The reason software patents suck so hard is because for every 10,000 totally bogus patents there's one that when you read it makes you think, wow, that really is an invention.

JVIDEL 15y ago

TBH it would be a true douche move if we were in say 2006, but right now FB is worth almost ten times more than Yahoo, so who cares? they can either buy Yahoo or even sue it into oblivion. Is not that crazy to assume this may actually be a last-resort strategy to sell Yahoo once and for all. Most agree Yang dropped the ball when he refused MSFT's offer.

edanm 15y ago
The reason for the timing is because of the IPO. Yahoo! is using this as a way to make Facebook desperate to settle, so that their pricing is higher during the IPO.
- JVIDEL 15y ago
  That too

PaulHoule 15y ago

The close analogy, for me, was Oracle's attempt to shake down Google. Patents are a game that's a lot like Poker. I couldn't blame any startup for accumulating a patent portfolio because that's something of economic value -- it could help an acquisition because a larger company would like to put together a broad portfolio. So long as you can get value out of it that way, it's all roses. Once you get to a lawsuit, it's ugly, largely because the result is unpredictable -- if people settle out of court you get the desired result, but if your opponent can fight you to the end, you're very likely to end up with invalidated patents. That, of course, is why companies like this broad portfolios -- if there are ten patents involved, it's much more likely something will stick.

shareme 15y ago

And how many worthless patents doe USV firms have? And where was Fred when MS started its shit? Oh effing come one now, lets have a honest conversation Fred instead of some lame miss-direction..

fredwilson 15y ago
i've been pretty loud and vocal on the anti-software patent thing for quite a while now

zyb09 15y ago

Well I hope he doesn't use any Apple products then. That would be pretty hypocritical.

funkah 15y ago
Good point, Apple is literally the only other company that has ever filed a patent lawsuit.
- tmuir 15y ago
  Apple sits diametrically opposed to Yahoo in the overall internet zeitgeist. Apple is the hot girl everyone gives a pass to, and Yahoo is the band nerd that everyone laughs at.
  - meric 15y ago
    It used to be the other way around, say, circa 1997.
fredwilson 15y ago
i called Apple evil on stage at a conference a few years ago http://venturebeat.com/2010/07/21/fred-wilson/ http://venturebeat.com/2010/07/21/fred-wilson/

joering2 15y ago

I really don't understand what their weak market position has to do with this lawsuit. If Yahoo! believes Facebook violated their patents, they will sue. They _should_ sue. They do it now because apparently that's the way new CEO does the business. I can't blame him, can you? Now, whether FW post was an emotional rant or he has any business saying what he said, hard to judge. But I read his blog for a while now and don't recall last time stumbling at such an emotional rant. Further, whether patent system needs "reform in this country" is relevant to the fact that one part believes other part infringe. If Yahoo!, Facebook or anyone else feels someone infringe and ended up saying "oh they system is broken lets wait until its fixed", then they may as well wait another 75 years. I say good things can come up from this, especially if Yahoo! loses. Facebook is claiming that what they are being sued over was "nothing new" at that time. Cool! Have them win. Next time someone build highly successful social website with human connections done based on request/approve/reject, and Facebook will try to shut them down based on infringe of one of their hundreds of patents, you can say: "oh, none of this was new at the time of Facebook: MySpace, Fridndster, etc. Here, I am using Facebook own rules - they win, I need to win too".

guard-of-terra 15y ago
No it should not. It's as if you said, if Yahoo has a gun, it should fire at Facebook. Tech companies do not make their living by exploiting their patents directly (as e.g. pharma companies do). They make living from advertising to their userbase. They do patent some things they use to keep and monetize that usebase, but there is no direct relation. So: Of course they should not sue "by default". It just isn't a winning strategy for them.
- joering2 15y ago
  so as long as I do a business in tech, I should not care about anyones patents (or IP in that matter) -- just open the patent book and look what I can steal (sorry: take) from others and use it to build my own tech company. Okay then.
  - guard-of-terra 15y ago

markokocic 15y ago

Well, I don't agree with the author. Why would it be ok for Yahoo and other big companies to use patents "only" to threaten small shops and keep the status quo? Let them fight between eachother, let Yahoo sue Facebook sue Gooogle sue Microsoft sue Apple sue HTC sue Samsung sue Sony sue Oracle sue ... let everyone sue everyone else. Let the total war on patents begin. Let the big players burn a ton of money on pointless legal battles. And then, and only then, they might push for a patent reform which will level playing field for all players, including new ones.

shasta 15y ago
Right, because that's what they're going to push through: legislation that levels the playing field.
michaelw 15y ago
This is already what happens. Changes have reinforced and will further reinforce the status quo and ensure that only the mega corporations will be able to play.

bergie 15y ago

The only Yahoo! property that I care about is Flickr, which I also pay for. It would be nice to find an alternative. So: suggestions for a social photo archive service which is reliable enough to be the "master copy" of my pictures, and preferably has Flickr import ability?

pavs 15y ago
imgur. They are not stagnant, improving all the time. Not as big as flickr, but big enough and reliable. I used both imgur pro and flickr but now I only use flickr because I am too lazy to switch.
logic 15y ago
Take a look at 500px.com; it seems a large swath of the higher-end of the community is migrating there. At this point, it's probably where I'm going to land with my archive if I have to move. Unfortunately, I don't believe they have the ability to automatically import your Flickr photos.
- bergie 15y ago
  I was looking at the API, and it seems that import would be quite easy. But since they lack tagging and some other Flickr-like features, the import would have to be slightly lossy.

lrobb 15y ago

OP: "Yahoo! thinks they can bully Internet newcomers ..." Wait... Is he still talking about the facebook lawsuit?

Porter_423 15y ago

The only reason for taking such decision is the money.We have noticed the same thing in the past.

Teef 15y ago

I suppose we all knew this day would come from Yahoo. The start of where lawyers take over the company and product make a steady march to complete crap. Pretty common pattern for companies that can no longer compete (SCO anyone). It is sad Yahoo still have a great brand and could reinvent itself. This entire thing is nonsense but I guess to try and squeeze some more revenue for the share holders is what they are obligated to do. I miss the old Yahoo.

badclient 15y ago

Today it's Yahoo, tomorrow Facebook.

mrgreenfur 15y ago

Facebook isn't a 'newcomer' and Yahoo! wouldn't bother suing anyone that wasn't already a giant.

polshaw 15y ago

I disagree with the patent situation as much as anyone, but that was massively melodramatic (and almost completely lacking any substance).

fredwilson 15y ago
it was a rant. you are right.

Hoff 15y ago

Fred Being Fred aside... Yahoo! could be aiming to be acquired by Facebook or Google. Assuming the patents involved are tenable, this looks rather like a viable reverse-acquisition strategy.

wavephorm 15y ago
But this really isn't the way to make any friends. I'd be surprised if anyone wants to do business with people like this ever again.
- tmuir 15y ago
  Who manufactures the memory in Apple iOS devices? Samsung.
- CamperBob 15y ago
  Corporations are like nations: they don't have friends, they have interests.
rooshdi 15y ago
You're kidding, right? It's kind of hard to tell with all these trolls nowadays.

jpdoctor 15y ago

I'd love to hear Fred talk about how Twitter is preparing, because it's a good guess that they're next. Probably the reason for this post in fact.

iamgopal 15y ago

I wish I would have choose law instead of software.

rdl 15y ago

Sounds like it is finally time to migrate off flickr. I wonder what the best options are -- self hosting of full res, plus FB Photos for social? Is Picasa worthwhile?

pullo 15y ago
same sentiment here. I've been using y! mail for a decade. Y! 'wall streetish' behavior is a good incentive to sever all ties. I am also certain , lot of their portal traffic comes when users are redirected to the portal home page when users sign off their ymail accnts.
- rdl 15y ago
  I feel slightly more disgusted than usual because I bought YHOO stock a while ago, because it was cheap (when factoring in Asian assets, etc.). I had hopes the new CEO would try to turn Yahoo around. I don't believe in shitty display advertising long-term, but it could be viable for another 5 years. At least, I had confidence he could fire enough Directors and VPs to make Yahoo at least as innovative as eBay (also not a particular paragon in Silicon Valley), and I was hoping Yahoo's boardmembers would start actually acting in the interests of shareholders. I guess I was wrong.

monochromatic 15y ago

This guy doesn't even mention the claims of the patents in suit, so why should I trust his opinion about their merits? If you don't know how to read a patent, you're absolutely not qualified to make pronouncements like this: > None of them represent unique and new ideas at the time of the filing. I supect they all can be thrown out over prior art if Facebook takes the time and effort to do that. Also, even the article that he links to just quotes the damn abstracts of the patents, as if that has anything to do with what they cover. Honestly people, I know you like to rail against software patents and the patent system in general... but educate yourselves first, or you just come off looking ignorant to anyone who knows the first thing about patents.

carbocation 15y ago
Far more valuable than this contrarian response would be an analysis of the claims on their merits, since you allude to a knowledge of the subject. Care to share?
- monochromatic 15y ago
  I haven't read the patents myself either, and I'm not willing to put in the time to pore over 10 patents just for the sake of curiosity and karma on HN. It just irritates me when I see such ignorant rage.
moldbug 15y ago
Can we bring Hitler into the conversation? No one needs to be "educated" in the intricate and fascinating political and economic power dynamics of the Third Reich to have a valid opinion about Hitler. All they need to know is that Hitler killed the Jews and was evil. Similarly, no one posting here needs to know anything about the technical details of patentology, a subject in which I suspect you're quite expert, to know that the patent system is evil and needs to be eradicated from the earth - like Hitler. Does that make you a bad person? Fact is, a lot of good people worked for Hitler. But at a certain point, they all had to reevaluate their career choices. I can only hope you'll do the same.
- 15y ago

justmyopinion 15y ago

I have no problem with someone being down on ridiculous patents. And think it is great that Joel stood up for Fred to say Fred isn't being hypocritical. However, i think that Fred should have dialed it back a bit before posting. He was trying to get noticed and Yahoo is an easy target as it has been sinking like the Titanic for a few years. But just because it is an easy target doesn't mean you should shoot at it.

ypcx 15y ago

Patent system doesn't need to be reformed. It needs to be flat out abolished. It's a disgrace to the human race. You can't own ideas. Patent system is a form of control, just as is oil, or just as the way the monetary system is run. All these must go, will go.

huhtenberg 15y ago

NB: Yahoo Mail is still an excellent source of widely-accepted disposable anonymous email addresses. If not the only one left.

nileshtrivedi 15y ago

What about Amazon then?

eroach 15y ago

SCO tried this crap to the tune of 45 million. What a stupid use of time and effort.

pedalpete 15y ago

I tried to find an example where Google sued a company for infringing on PageRank, but it doesn't appear that has ever happened. If everyone really just uses patents for the threat of a possible lawsuit, is it still worth having them, even if you hope to never use one?

sopooneo 15y ago
Many others have already pointed it out, but how closely it parallels nuclear weapons philosophy is startling.

Rawgawd 15y ago

Well, I'd simply say that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh4jvDsNtEE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh4jvDsNtEE

laconian 15y ago

The engineering soul of the company is being evicted from the body, and now this. They're like the zombie Husks from Mass Effect. :)

larrys 15y ago

The title of this changed from: "They are dead to me. Dead and gone. I hate them now" to: "Yahoo Crosses The Line" Curious about the reason this was done.

duck 15y ago
Yeah, I just noticed that as well. Once something goes live you have the right to change it, but I would leave an update on why.

shapeshed 15y ago

This is like watching a once great sports team play in a rusty, deserted stadium. This hurts so much because Yahoo helped make the a web a beautiful, free place where humans could create and communicate. They once understood that but are now reduced to mugging full pockets in back alleys. Pretty clear the company is being run by stooges and fee chasing lawyers now and is sinking fast.

law 15y ago

Thomas Jefferson's 1788 quote, in a way, portends this: "the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." The dictionary definition of government ("authoritative direction or control") ostensibly extends this to encompass corporations. Patents are merely one of many tactics for corporations gain control; it's nothing new, and it ought to be expected. Notwithstanding the foreseeability of patent warfare, I remain despondent toward "unwritten rules" in American law. Yes, they exist; it's no surprise that defendants in criminal cases who assert their 6th Amendment rights to a speedy trial that they subsequently lose will suffer a heightened penalty. The seminal case on this subject, Bordenkircher v. Hayes, specifically endorses threats of stiffer sentences to entice criminal defendants to waive their right to trial and plead guilty to a lesser offense. One can model this as a game of imperfect information, with society reaping the rewards. So the author's reliance on this de facto "rule not to litigate" is flawed. The real problem arises when companies exclude others from practicing a technology in which that company's property interest is a mere subterfuge. Rarely do companies practice the technologies for which they've secured patent protection, and that brings me to my last Thomas Jefferson quote: A man has a right to use a saw, an axe, a plane, separately; may he not combine their uses on the same piece of wood? He has a right to use his knife to cut his meat, a fork to hold it; may a patentee take from him the right to combine their use on the same subject? Such a law, instead of enlarging our conveniences, as was intended, would most fearfully abridge them, and crowd us by monopolies out of the use of the things we have. However, we should be careful not to criticize the managers of these companies too much: they have a fiduciary duty of care to the corporation. Is there another "unwritten rule" that shareholders of a (struggling) corporation won't launch a derivative suit against the board of directors for failure to assert the corporation's patent rights against an infringing third party? So in my view, the solution isn't at the corporate level; it's at the national level. As such, patent reform should be a national issue addressed by politicians. Patent term length [c|sh]ould be proportional to the research expenses actually incurred. Alternatively, we might want want a "patent abandonment doctrine" that moves to public domain those patents whose rights haven't been enforced (almost like in trademark law). Even still, we might want to wholly abandon the right to transfer or sell patents (and for that matter, all intellectual property) entirely. I haven't researched the ramifications of these potential solutions, so they're offered merely as points for discussion.

joshuahedlund 15y ago

My new hobby: googling abstract website techniques to see what kind of patents I'm violating on a regular basis. Did you know about the patent on mouseover (but not mouseclick!) dropdown menus? http://www.m-cam.com/patently-obvious/intellectual-property-analysis-webvention-llcs-us-pat-no-5251294 http://www.m-cam.com/patently-obvious/intellectual-property-...

CamperBob 15y ago
With treble damages, that could turn into an expensive hobby.

marizmelo 15y ago

yawho?