21 ms·

Marissa Mayer Has Completed Step One

176 points by steven 12y ago

mathattack 12y ago
I don't like when people say, "Just look at the stock price." The stock benefit came from not undoing the work of her predecessors who purchased Ali Baba. The article does jump into this later. Turnarounds take a while, and this is indeed Step 1. I can't think of another "It" company that returned to greatness. Perhaps AOL is the closes. (For those who argue for Apple, I don't think it was the "It" company the first time around)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- 001sky 12y ago
  I don't think yahoo was ever really an 'it' company...they were (maybe) an 'it stock', but that's a who nother ball of wax. At the company level, in terms of having a "category killer" product, they never had one. In order for Yahoo to ever right the ship, that is what they need. They need to become indispensible for either offering something unqiue or something of unqiue value. Their investment in alibaba was close to that...both unique to investors and great value...where else could you a private equity stake in a huge chineese start-up? The issue there was the "killer product" was a specialized financial asset with a finite life. This is distinct from something with an evergreen consumer service or product that will be monetizable over the long run. The task for the CEO is can take the capirtal on hand and start building good (evergreen) products? If nothing else she should be given (retain) some capital and another 3 years before making a final judgement. At that stage, take a look at the pipleline and if there is nothing in it...that will be a signal. Yahoo right now is like a pharma company which had a blockbuster come off of patent...its all about the ability to re-plenish the pipeline...the profits that happened previously are nearly irrelevant except for providing the position/capital to recruit people for the next round of product development.
  - JamesSwift 12y ago
    I think yahoo's 'it product' has been their fantasy football offering. It has been the crowd favorite for many years, and neglected for a majority of that.
    - dykesa 12y ago
      I would have agreed until this last round of "we changed it, you'll like it, and we won't change it back" has my group looking for a different league host for the first time.
      - FeeTinesAMady 12y ago
        What did they change, if you don't mind my asking? I've been using it for two seasons now, and haven't noticed anything too annoying, although I have been in public leagues only so far.
  - edwinnathaniel 12y ago
    Does a "media" company ever had an "it" (killer-product/cash cow) long-term product? Yahoo! is not a software company (yet). Comparing Yahoo! against Google, Microsoft, or Apple seems like comparing NBC/ABC/Fox againt those 3 no/
    - mathattack 12y ago
      It used to be a software company - it was Google before Google. I think the media distinction is a little false. Several media companies have had long term products: The Big 3 networks pre-cable, HBO, Dreamworks...
    - 001sky 12y ago
      They own (scarce) rights to broad-band spectrum.
  - callahad 12y ago
    > At the company level, in terms of having a "category killer" product, they never had one. Yahoo's Directory and Search offerings were category-defining once upon a time, weren't they?
- efuquen 12y ago
  I'm not sure how you could argue Apple wasn't an 'it' company. Obviously that's a pretty subjective term but not only did they have a revolutionary product but their IPO was a pretty big deal as well. From the Apple Wikipedia article: On December 12, 1980, Apple went public at $22 per share,[30] generating more capital than any IPO since Ford Motor Company in 1956 and instantly creating more millionaires (about 300) than any company in history.[31]
  - mathattack 12y ago
    Fair enough. I've been an Apple fan for a LONG time, and have always felt it was the alternative, and never the main player. For a long time it seemed like it was just a few bad quarters from selling to IBM. It seems like the "It" companies were the ones that owned their markets. In defense of your positions, in the early 90s, many of the most talented engineers that I knew flocked to Apple. They left later in the decade, and then returned post-bubble.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
dlu 12y ago
I like that phrasing in the title. She's done a lot, but there's clearly a lot more to do. This is a well written piece of long-form. I do often forget about small things like the Weather app, which is absolutely delightful. I hope they apply that level of polish to their other apps. Personally I think they should skip small apps such as Weather and just dive right meatier categories such as Mail
easytiger 12y ago
Step One: Turn yahoo into a SEO spamfilled shithole: tick.
jkot 12y ago
Step Two: ???? Step Three: profit!
- markpundmann 12y ago
  Step Four: Bro Down!
photorized 12y ago
31 months is a long time though.
- protomyth 12y ago
  Steve Jobs at 31 months hadn't got to the iPod yet.
  - pavlov 12y ago
    Yeah. At his 31 months back at Apple, Jobs was getting ready to launch the Power Mac G4 Cube and the Flower Power iMacs... The investment community thought he had lost it, and Apple's stock price collapsed. (There was also that dot-com bust thing, I know.) At the same time, Apple was building the iPod. When product cycles are long and vision spans even longer, current performance may not be indicative of what's coming.
    - alextgordon 12y ago
      That's a little uncharitable. The original iMacs were ridiculously successful, you couldn't turn on the TV without seeing one.
      - pavlov 12y ago
        Sure. But by 2001, the 15" CRT form factor was getting stale. Apple tried to refresh the design with patterns named "Flower Power" and "Blue Dalmatian": http://apple-history.com/imac_cdrw http://apple-history.com/imac_cdrw These got, um, mixed reviews, and didn't sell well. (Even the famous taste of Jobs+Ive failed sometimes...)
  - stock_toaster 12y ago
    Apple makes hardware though, which takes quite a bit more time. I don't see that as a relevant comparison.
    - protomyth 12y ago
MollyR 12y ago
Is it strange that people defend Mayer so much ? I find it a little strange. I'm having a hard time figuring what the baseline of criticism is for a tech ceo, and how much they get defended from it. I know Jobs, Gates, Ballmer, and Zuckerberg, have a crazy amount of criticism, and usually the (if it ever comes) defense comes later after the company/project gets huge or financially successful.
- acangiano 12y ago
  > Is it strange that people defend Mayer so much? I find it a little strange. One possible reason is that she is a woman. This, seemingly irrelevant fact, has a couple of potential implications. First, criticism towards one of the few female tech CEOs could be viewed as misogynistic. Most people would shy away from such controversy. Second, as a woman in tech she is the underdog, and people love to root for the underdog. Just a theory, I could be way off of course.
  - Crito 12y ago
    Another possible explanation is the state of Yahoo in years preceding her. Basically a company that everyone was kind of surprised was still around. For as much as people dislike Microsoft or Facebook, I don't think many people think "why does this company still exist?" (There was definitely a time when people thought that of Apple though...) (In particular, I remember a lot of this sort of anti-Yahoo sentiment in the months prior to Marissa Mayer, particularly around the time that the Yammer CEO made some announcement that he would not be hiring ex-Yahoo employees because of Yahoo's patent stance. People decried that CEO as being ridiculous, but there were also a lot of people expressing anti-Yahoo sentiments.) Probably some combination of both, as well as a few other factors.
    - zem 12y ago
      she also represents the seductive (at least for techies) narrative of an efficient, engineering-focused ceo coming in and cleaning up/revitalising a moribund "suit-driven" company, and hopefully returning it to its glory days when technology was king.
smegel 12y ago
Which step is creating a killer product?
- illicium 12y ago
  Nah, just buy a startup that has a decent product and a bunch of users, inject more and more ads until the product dies, rinse and repeat.
bonn1 12y ago
My recent experience with Yahoo: A while ago after I installed uTorrent all my browsers (Chrome, Firefox and Safari) switched to Yahoo as my default search. Then I changed them back to Google. After a while (I guess after I rebooted the computer) again all browsers showed Yahoo again. I googled for some help I found a hint that I have to disable and remove the 'Searchme' extension. I did so. After a while (I guess after I rebooted the computer) again all browsers showed Yahoo again and the Searchme extension showed up again. And still Searchme is there—I took a screenshot http://imgur.com/OsH9o0m http://imgur.com/OsH9o0m EDIT: Why the downvotes?
- bhayden 12y ago
  uTorrent is pretty terrible these days, I steer everyone away from it.
  - danw3 12y ago
    And in what direction do you steer them?
    - nullren 12y ago
      transmission
      - EC1 12y ago
        +1 for transmission, great app.
        droidist2 12y ago
        The song is really good too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYaN2w6rcgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYaN2w6rcgk
    - perryh2 12y ago
      Deluge is a good client with a local GUI and web access
murbard2 12y ago
She collected underpants?
greenyoda 12y ago
For a more pessimistic take on Yahoo's outlook, have a look at this earnings analysis from Forbes, which was posted recently on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9133430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9133430 The author claims that Yahoo's core business is growing less profitable and its numbers are propped up by non-recurring revenue.
Animats 12y ago
It's progress. But the real problem was that Yahoo got out of search. Search is the cash cow of the industry.
insertion 12y ago
This is possibly the most source-friendly piece of tech journalism I've read in a while. I don't think there is a single point in that piece that would make Yahoo PR the least bit uncomfortable. Credit where it's due, the article is incredibly well written and beautifully presented. It's just a shame to see such unquestioning faith in a source. One by one, Levy hammers away at every recent criticism of Yahoo. Anything that could not justified was deemed to be overblown. "Some of the various flaps involving her leadership were crazily overblown, like her personal child care accommodations, or an edict against working at home that affected a tiny percentage of Yahoo’s workforce." Every original fact in this article is information Yahoo would obviously want to share, like the success of its revamped ad platform. Based on the way he has failed to question anything else that Mayer has done during her tenure, it is hard to believe that these facts were questioned and examined in any detail. Don't get me wrong: I think that Mayer may be doing a good job. I'm not too sure either way. I just think, as a piece of tech reporting, this is embarrassing.
- fit2rule 12y ago
  PR piece: embarrassing. Hit piece: equally embarrassing. Why are the critical articles more appealing in this case? Is there some inherent desire to see the criticism turn out to be true which is greater than the desire to see the criticism turn out to be unfounded?
  - insertion 12y ago
    Being reflexively cynical can be just as harmful. The problem for Yahoo is that, at the moment, the critical articles are very dense in facts. Take a look at things like this for an example: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2015/03/01/yahoos-incredible-shrinking-profitability-in-its-core-business/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2015/03/01/yahoos-in... As much as you can disagree with the content of this article, it's hard to argue that it's as light and fluffy as the PR piece served up by Levy. Regarding Carlson's stuff on Yahoo, you might disagree with some of his opinions. You might even think his book is a hit piece. But, at the very least, it's a well-researched hit piece. Levy only seemed to speak with Yahoo PR and republish their opinions directly. I don't think any reasonable reader could assume that Carlson only spoke to a hedge fund manager short on Yahoo.
geebee 12y ago
I'm one of those people with a yahoo email account, mainly because I'm on the old side now and got it way back when yahoo email was, well, kind of like hotmail for people even older than me. The article refers to people like me as loyalists, but I'm really not. I honestly don't like my yahoo email account. It's not technology, it's the the nature of the company itself. I know all websites want to keep you around, but the difference between using gmail and yahoo mail is remarkable. I just went to mail.google.com, and I see my email. Now I'm going to yahoo mail… there's a big ad for life insurance next to my messages. Above them is a slightly larger link, intended to look like an email messages, for "rich dad, poor dad." Actually, something interesting has happened lately… the link expands in size about 3 seconds after the page has loaded. I'm starting to wonder if yahoo has noticed that if they do this, they will expand the ad just at the moment that the users wanting to check their email click on the first, top message, leading them instead to click on an ad, increasing "click through". I'll admit, I'm leaning toward the tinfoil hat side of suspicious with that last one, but there's a reason I've started to think this way. Go to yahoo's front page, and it's click bait city. It seems like yahoo will do everything in its power to make sure I don't do what it is I came to the site to do, run a web search, or check my email. In short, it appears to me that yahoo is still a media company, following the portal model, trying to get people to stay on the site for reasons that had nothing to do with why they came to the site. And by click bait, I mean titles like "the one medical test you shouldn't skip!", or "the 5 signs that he's manipulating you". In short, I'm starting to wonder if having a yahoo email account is actually a risk to my ability to concentrate. Maybe yahoo is becoming more of an engineering/technology company, maybe not. If Mayer can make this happen, that'd be quite an accomplishment. There's definitely a huge legacy of specifically intending go not be an engineering company.
- NegativeK 12y ago
  Back when I used to QA emails, I'd check Google, Hotmail, Yahoo!, and Aol. in the various browsers. I listed them in that order for a reason -- Gmail was the cleanest and the most usable, while the Aol. web client was half ads and irrelevant columns, requiring you to click on the inbox to even read email, and displaying some of the most ridiculous bottom-of-the-barrel flashy ads that you can get before you end up seeing Adult Friend Finder or penis extension animations. If ad quality is directly related to how much the host website needs the revenue and/or how valuable the clicks are, it's clear which company is doing the best online.
leppr 12y ago
Only thing I hope is that this company will die out before shelling out another billion at the next big social thing and kill it like they know so well how to do.
- easytiger 12y ago
  I had another comment downvoted and invisibanned for suggesting that yahoo is basically an SEO spamhouse now. Look at their landing page in the uk at least. Right now it is articles about people's sex lives, adverts for makeup, adverts and viral videos
  - leppr 12y ago
    Oh yes I would downvote you too, don't you realize the effort that comes into crafting all this content that you qualify of spam? Many people have to come together and figure out ways of making seemingly non-intelligent beings click on things. This is in no way a small feat and I must say they are very good at it, almost Buzzfeed-level of perfection.
yarrel 12y ago
Eleven to go?

176 points by steven 12y ago

I don't like when people say, "Just look at the stock price." The stock benefit came from not undoing the work of her predecessors who purchased Ali Baba. The article does jump into this later. Turnarounds take a while, and this is indeed Step 1. I can't think of another "It" company that returned to greatness. Perhaps AOL is the closes. (For those who argue for Apple, I don't think it was the "It" company the first time around)

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
001sky 12y ago
I don't think yahoo was ever really an 'it' company...they were (maybe) an 'it stock', but that's a who nother ball of wax. At the company level, in terms of having a "category killer" product, they never had one. In order for Yahoo to ever right the ship, that is what they need. They need to become indispensible for either offering something unqiue or something of unqiue value. Their investment in alibaba was close to that...both unique to investors and great value...where else could you a private equity stake in a huge chineese start-up? The issue there was the "killer product" was a specialized financial asset with a finite life. This is distinct from something with an evergreen consumer service or product that will be monetizable over the long run. The task for the CEO is can take the capirtal on hand and start building good (evergreen) products? If nothing else she should be given (retain) some capital and another 3 years before making a final judgement. At that stage, take a look at the pipleline and if there is nothing in it...that will be a signal. Yahoo right now is like a pharma company which had a blockbuster come off of patent...its all about the ability to re-plenish the pipeline...the profits that happened previously are nearly irrelevant except for providing the position/capital to recruit people for the next round of product development.
- JamesSwift 12y ago
  I think yahoo's 'it product' has been their fantasy football offering. It has been the crowd favorite for many years, and neglected for a majority of that.
  - dykesa 12y ago
    I would have agreed until this last round of "we changed it, you'll like it, and we won't change it back" has my group looking for a different league host for the first time.
    - FeeTinesAMady 12y ago
      What did they change, if you don't mind my asking? I've been using it for two seasons now, and haven't noticed anything too annoying, although I have been in public leagues only so far.
- edwinnathaniel 12y ago
  Does a "media" company ever had an "it" (killer-product/cash cow) long-term product? Yahoo! is not a software company (yet). Comparing Yahoo! against Google, Microsoft, or Apple seems like comparing NBC/ABC/Fox againt those 3 no/
  - mathattack 12y ago
    It used to be a software company - it was Google before Google. I think the media distinction is a little false. Several media companies have had long term products: The Big 3 networks pre-cable, HBO, Dreamworks...
  - 001sky 12y ago
    They own (scarce) rights to broad-band spectrum.
- callahad 12y ago
  > At the company level, in terms of having a "category killer" product, they never had one. Yahoo's Directory and Search offerings were category-defining once upon a time, weren't they?
efuquen 12y ago
I'm not sure how you could argue Apple wasn't an 'it' company. Obviously that's a pretty subjective term but not only did they have a revolutionary product but their IPO was a pretty big deal as well. From the Apple Wikipedia article: On December 12, 1980, Apple went public at $22 per share,[30] generating more capital than any IPO since Ford Motor Company in 1956 and instantly creating more millionaires (about 300) than any company in history.[31]
- mathattack 12y ago
  Fair enough. I've been an Apple fan for a LONG time, and have always felt it was the alternative, and never the main player. For a long time it seemed like it was just a few bad quarters from selling to IBM. It seems like the "It" companies were the ones that owned their markets. In defense of your positions, in the early 90s, many of the most talented engineers that I knew flocked to Apple. They left later in the decade, and then returned post-bubble.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

dlu 12y ago

I like that phrasing in the title. She's done a lot, but there's clearly a lot more to do. This is a well written piece of long-form. I do often forget about small things like the Weather app, which is absolutely delightful. I hope they apply that level of polish to their other apps. Personally I think they should skip small apps such as Weather and just dive right meatier categories such as Mail

easytiger 12y ago

Step One: Turn yahoo into a SEO spamfilled shithole: tick.

jkot 12y ago

Step Two: ???? Step Three: profit!

markpundmann 12y ago
Step Four: Bro Down!

photorized 12y ago

31 months is a long time though.

protomyth 12y ago
Steve Jobs at 31 months hadn't got to the iPod yet.
- pavlov 12y ago
  Yeah. At his 31 months back at Apple, Jobs was getting ready to launch the Power Mac G4 Cube and the Flower Power iMacs... The investment community thought he had lost it, and Apple's stock price collapsed. (There was also that dot-com bust thing, I know.) At the same time, Apple was building the iPod. When product cycles are long and vision spans even longer, current performance may not be indicative of what's coming.
  - alextgordon 12y ago
    That's a little uncharitable. The original iMacs were ridiculously successful, you couldn't turn on the TV without seeing one.
    - pavlov 12y ago
      Sure. But by 2001, the 15" CRT form factor was getting stale. Apple tried to refresh the design with patterns named "Flower Power" and "Blue Dalmatian": http://apple-history.com/imac_cdrw http://apple-history.com/imac_cdrw These got, um, mixed reviews, and didn't sell well. (Even the famous taste of Jobs+Ive failed sometimes...)
- stock_toaster 12y ago
  Apple makes hardware though, which takes quite a bit more time. I don't see that as a relevant comparison.
  - protomyth 12y ago

MollyR 12y ago

Is it strange that people defend Mayer so much ? I find it a little strange. I'm having a hard time figuring what the baseline of criticism is for a tech ceo, and how much they get defended from it. I know Jobs, Gates, Ballmer, and Zuckerberg, have a crazy amount of criticism, and usually the (if it ever comes) defense comes later after the company/project gets huge or financially successful.

acangiano 12y ago
> Is it strange that people defend Mayer so much? I find it a little strange. One possible reason is that she is a woman. This, seemingly irrelevant fact, has a couple of potential implications. First, criticism towards one of the few female tech CEOs could be viewed as misogynistic. Most people would shy away from such controversy. Second, as a woman in tech she is the underdog, and people love to root for the underdog. Just a theory, I could be way off of course.
- Crito 12y ago
  Another possible explanation is the state of Yahoo in years preceding her. Basically a company that everyone was kind of surprised was still around. For as much as people dislike Microsoft or Facebook, I don't think many people think "why does this company still exist?" (There was definitely a time when people thought that of Apple though...) (In particular, I remember a lot of this sort of anti-Yahoo sentiment in the months prior to Marissa Mayer, particularly around the time that the Yammer CEO made some announcement that he would not be hiring ex-Yahoo employees because of Yahoo's patent stance. People decried that CEO as being ridiculous, but there were also a lot of people expressing anti-Yahoo sentiments.) Probably some combination of both, as well as a few other factors.
  - zem 12y ago
    she also represents the seductive (at least for techies) narrative of an efficient, engineering-focused ceo coming in and cleaning up/revitalising a moribund "suit-driven" company, and hopefully returning it to its glory days when technology was king.

smegel 12y ago

Which step is creating a killer product?

illicium 12y ago
Nah, just buy a startup that has a decent product and a bunch of users, inject more and more ads until the product dies, rinse and repeat.

bonn1 12y ago

My recent experience with Yahoo: A while ago after I installed uTorrent all my browsers (Chrome, Firefox and Safari) switched to Yahoo as my default search. Then I changed them back to Google. After a while (I guess after I rebooted the computer) again all browsers showed Yahoo again. I googled for some help I found a hint that I have to disable and remove the 'Searchme' extension. I did so. After a while (I guess after I rebooted the computer) again all browsers showed Yahoo again and the Searchme extension showed up again. And still Searchme is there—I took a screenshot http://imgur.com/OsH9o0m http://imgur.com/OsH9o0m EDIT: Why the downvotes?

bhayden 12y ago
uTorrent is pretty terrible these days, I steer everyone away from it.
- danw3 12y ago
  And in what direction do you steer them?
  - nullren 12y ago
    transmission
    - EC1 12y ago
      +1 for transmission, great app.
      - droidist2 12y ago
        The song is really good too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYaN2w6rcgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYaN2w6rcgk
  - perryh2 12y ago
    Deluge is a good client with a local GUI and web access

murbard2 12y ago

She collected underpants?

greenyoda 12y ago

For a more pessimistic take on Yahoo's outlook, have a look at this earnings analysis from Forbes, which was posted recently on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9133430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9133430 The author claims that Yahoo's core business is growing less profitable and its numbers are propped up by non-recurring revenue.

Animats 12y ago

It's progress. But the real problem was that Yahoo got out of search. Search is the cash cow of the industry.

insertion 12y ago

This is possibly the most source-friendly piece of tech journalism I've read in a while. I don't think there is a single point in that piece that would make Yahoo PR the least bit uncomfortable. Credit where it's due, the article is incredibly well written and beautifully presented. It's just a shame to see such unquestioning faith in a source. One by one, Levy hammers away at every recent criticism of Yahoo. Anything that could not justified was deemed to be overblown. "Some of the various flaps involving her leadership were crazily overblown, like her personal child care accommodations, or an edict against working at home that affected a tiny percentage of Yahoo’s workforce." Every original fact in this article is information Yahoo would obviously want to share, like the success of its revamped ad platform. Based on the way he has failed to question anything else that Mayer has done during her tenure, it is hard to believe that these facts were questioned and examined in any detail. Don't get me wrong: I think that Mayer may be doing a good job. I'm not too sure either way. I just think, as a piece of tech reporting, this is embarrassing.

fit2rule 12y ago
PR piece: embarrassing. Hit piece: equally embarrassing. Why are the critical articles more appealing in this case? Is there some inherent desire to see the criticism turn out to be true which is greater than the desire to see the criticism turn out to be unfounded?
- insertion 12y ago
  Being reflexively cynical can be just as harmful. The problem for Yahoo is that, at the moment, the critical articles are very dense in facts. Take a look at things like this for an example: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2015/03/01/yahoos-incredible-shrinking-profitability-in-its-core-business/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2015/03/01/yahoos-in... As much as you can disagree with the content of this article, it's hard to argue that it's as light and fluffy as the PR piece served up by Levy. Regarding Carlson's stuff on Yahoo, you might disagree with some of his opinions. You might even think his book is a hit piece. But, at the very least, it's a well-researched hit piece. Levy only seemed to speak with Yahoo PR and republish their opinions directly. I don't think any reasonable reader could assume that Carlson only spoke to a hedge fund manager short on Yahoo.

geebee 12y ago

I'm one of those people with a yahoo email account, mainly because I'm on the old side now and got it way back when yahoo email was, well, kind of like hotmail for people even older than me. The article refers to people like me as loyalists, but I'm really not. I honestly don't like my yahoo email account. It's not technology, it's the the nature of the company itself. I know all websites want to keep you around, but the difference between using gmail and yahoo mail is remarkable. I just went to mail.google.com, and I see my email. Now I'm going to yahoo mail… there's a big ad for life insurance next to my messages. Above them is a slightly larger link, intended to look like an email messages, for "rich dad, poor dad." Actually, something interesting has happened lately… the link expands in size about 3 seconds after the page has loaded. I'm starting to wonder if yahoo has noticed that if they do this, they will expand the ad just at the moment that the users wanting to check their email click on the first, top message, leading them instead to click on an ad, increasing "click through". I'll admit, I'm leaning toward the tinfoil hat side of suspicious with that last one, but there's a reason I've started to think this way. Go to yahoo's front page, and it's click bait city. It seems like yahoo will do everything in its power to make sure I don't do what it is I came to the site to do, run a web search, or check my email. In short, it appears to me that yahoo is still a media company, following the portal model, trying to get people to stay on the site for reasons that had nothing to do with why they came to the site. And by click bait, I mean titles like "the one medical test you shouldn't skip!", or "the 5 signs that he's manipulating you". In short, I'm starting to wonder if having a yahoo email account is actually a risk to my ability to concentrate. Maybe yahoo is becoming more of an engineering/technology company, maybe not. If Mayer can make this happen, that'd be quite an accomplishment. There's definitely a huge legacy of specifically intending go not be an engineering company.

NegativeK 12y ago
Back when I used to QA emails, I'd check Google, Hotmail, Yahoo!, and Aol. in the various browsers. I listed them in that order for a reason -- Gmail was the cleanest and the most usable, while the Aol. web client was half ads and irrelevant columns, requiring you to click on the inbox to even read email, and displaying some of the most ridiculous bottom-of-the-barrel flashy ads that you can get before you end up seeing Adult Friend Finder or penis extension animations. If ad quality is directly related to how much the host website needs the revenue and/or how valuable the clicks are, it's clear which company is doing the best online.

leppr 12y ago

Only thing I hope is that this company will die out before shelling out another billion at the next big social thing and kill it like they know so well how to do.

easytiger 12y ago
I had another comment downvoted and invisibanned for suggesting that yahoo is basically an SEO spamhouse now. Look at their landing page in the uk at least. Right now it is articles about people's sex lives, adverts for makeup, adverts and viral videos
- leppr 12y ago
  Oh yes I would downvote you too, don't you realize the effort that comes into crafting all this content that you qualify of spam? Many people have to come together and figure out ways of making seemingly non-intelligent beings click on things. This is in no way a small feat and I must say they are very good at it, almost Buzzfeed-level of perfection.

yarrel 12y ago

Eleven to go?