Hacker News Reader

Comment by PhilWright | Hacker News Reader

Whenever I see a struggling company like this I ask myself the simple question. If the company didn't exist, would there be a need to create it? In the case of Yahoo I think the answer is no. If they disappeared tomorrow there would be no compelling reason for others to try and fill the gap it left behind. Hell, I doubt most people would even noticed they had gone.

So they need to build a new business from the dying ashes of the current revenue. At the moment it does not look like the CEO has any good ideas on how to do that.

View on HN

I think that this is definitely the ideal move under different circumstances. But that wouldn't be a viable solution for Yahoo.

Currently, even at its 'dying' state, Yahoo has huge traffic from extremely loyal users who are mostly in the higher income (30+) age range. To dump that out the window would be an incredibly irresponsible business move. It's easy for a small, young company to pivot, but an old giant like Yahoo has to move slowly.

That being said, I think it would be a great move to really accept the growing age and therefore unique needs of this internet company rather than trying to follow new trends. That's truly their strongest leverage material at this point. Can they reinvent how the Internet is used by people over 40?

"Yahoo has huge traffic from extremely loyal users who are mostly in the higher income (30+) age range."

Is that statement a fact? If so, care to substantiate it.

I work for one of the largest companies in the world and we no longer use Yahoo; we use too. Every year in the US, the Superbowl pulls in HUGE dollars in advertisements. I have to plan for this every year and have been doing this for the past 10 years.

Around Superbowl time, we increase our public facing web server presence due to the increase load. It use to be that Yahoo represented more than 50% of the clicks but that is less than 10% as of last year.

I work for a fortune-5 company. We use Akami to help distribute the load. I wish I could publish more info like the data and the company but unfortunately I'm not legally permitted.

I will say this: I doubt Yahoo Ad revenue will return at least from my perspective and what I've seen over the past 7-10 years. More and more of our Ad refs come from youtube.

Yahoo Japan is strong though not majority owned by Yahoo itself. I think if you look at markets outside of just the US you'll find that the landscape is sometimes more diverse. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2012/04/24/reference/yahoo-...

why not just say what company that is?

Some companies have onerous restrictions on employees using their names in public, but hinting obliquely is fine. It's a matter of not appearing to endorse random, unvetted public posts by employees, not a matter of secrecy.

The OP says "Fortune 5". The candidates are Walmart, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Berkshire Hathaway, and Apple. Which one of those has super bowl ads and uses Akamai? There's your answer.

and the commenter also says in another thread:

"I run an entire data center of Slackware Linux on Dell servers."

so, definitely not apple. which leads me to think all that is BS and they just have too much time on their hands.

Apple using Slackware on Dells would be such a shocker?

No, I have my own hosting company. It is not related to the Fortune-5 I was speaking of. To clarify, I own an IT consulting company and I have been on contract with the fortune-5. I supply contract heads else where too - H1Bs.

i think so. at least a BSD flavour...

I own my own company. In fact, I own two companies.

One of my customers is a fortune-5. I am contracted and I have a small team that I manage within.

If I must explain, I'm a serial entrepreneur. I've owned 3-4 companies in my past including a cable TV company too. It would be more accurate to say I have my hands in many things with not much time on my hands.

THe fortune-5 company is an automotive company genius.

doesn't that leave walmart?

did they ever announced on the big league? I never saw them even on yahoo. only cheaper venues.

It wont be Berkshire Hathway for sure, one of its subsidiaries like Gieco

Adding a source for reading: http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2378009/yahoo-bing-n...

This is from last year. A market that is mostly 35+ and women of higher income (aka the spending decision makers)? It's not something that should be dismissed.

They don't need to kill it, but they need to create new businesses. And they can't just acquire them either, unless they let them completely independent, but continue to fund them.

I object only on the grounds that Flickr is the only good photo site for people who really care about their photos.

Having tried to use 500px for a few months, they cannot even manage to do album privacy correctly.

I had such high hopes for 500px when I tried to switch over a year (I even paid upfront before fully testing it). The features just didn't compare to Flickr.

On the other hand, Flickr's admin UI starting to fill up with crap I don't about, like creating mugs and books and shit. Fair enough, they're trying to make money, but that stuff has no place on the main interface.

It's still the easiest place for me to store and share photos, however.

That, and I'd be disappointed that my email account would vanish, along with years worth of mail.

I lost 4 years' emails (1998-2002) because my account was inactive for a mere 6 months! Contacted Yahoo in 2002 but couldn't get my emails back.

Ouch! Do they have any facility that I can use to back-up/archive my email externally?

I also have a Yahoo account, but i haven't tried to back it up externally.

Previously their paid product was called Mail Plus, and that was the only way you could get mail out in bulk. But a while ago they made a change. From an article I just found:

   What Yahoo does not mention is that Pop3 access
   is now available as well. While I cannot say if
   it was enabled previously for free users, I know
   for a fact that it was limited in the past to
   paying Yahoo Mail users.

That doesn't say anything about IMAP, but I know that is also possible nowadays. I think they had to add that feature. E.g. my wife accesses her Yahoo Mail from her iPhone. Without IMAP, how could she get her messages? (Rhetorical question. Rhetorical answer: she couldn't!).

http://www.ghacks.net/2013/10/08/yahoo-mail-plus-turns-yahoo...

You can guess I haven't used their services since then, not sure if they let you do that easily now.

Yes, good point :)

SmugMug

I just use imgur. Am I doing something wrong?

I don't think you're doing something wrong but I think you're doing something differently from a Flickr Pro subscriber who is using the site to store curated high quality photos online.

Imgur will aggressively recompress any image above 5MB. A few years ago it used to be even worse.

> If the company didn't exist, would there be a need to create it?

Should I guess that you were not adult yet when Yahoo! started?

When Yahoo! was founded, there was a need for WWW site directory, and Yahoo! filled that vacuum. It was the go to place for finding the sites in your area of interest.

Some of the sections of Yahoo! for example: Finance and Sports are still go to places for me and I am sure countless others. I haven't come across any other sites that even come close to those two sections on Yahoo!. Even today, there is no single directory site with curated list of relevant sites, news and information from such sites. So, I will say there is still a need for a Yahoo! like portal with curated information. What Google spits out in search and associated sites is SEO crap. Google has inability to differentiate among 14,777 news articles on a topic and which one is the most relevant and comprehensive.

IMO, Yahoo! need to go back to their roots which was portal of curated information. If they wait too long and the direction FB is heading, they will fill the void left by Yahoo!.

> I haven't come across any other sites that even come close to [sports and finance] on Yahoo!

You haven't been able to find any other sites focusing on finance or sports on the internet? To be clear, yahoo does a decent job curating finance and sports sections, but it is extremely trivial to find sites similar to Yahoo. Here are a few, I found:

Finance:

========

Marketwatch[0], is very similar to yahoo finance. Owned by WSJ and Dow Jones.

Google Finance[1] is like Yahoo! finance, only done by google.

MSN Money[2] almost the exact same thing as Yahoo.

Then you have your more niche honorable mentions like motley fool, seekingalpha, zerohedge, etc.

SPORTS:

=======

Without repeating Google and Microsoft offerings, there is of course:

ESPN which is the second largest sports news provider, also they have a tv network about sports. They sports fairly hard.[3]

Bleecher Report is not to be out sportsed, sort of a hipster pitchfork media type sports player.[4]

CBS Sports[5]

NBC SPorts[6] This, and the preceding offering are large entrenched media rent collectors, which is similar to yahoo, except that they are profitable.

So, in finality, I find that statement absurd, but I am glad you enjoy yahoo. I am rooting for it as it is an under dog for sure.

[0]http://www.marketwatch.com

[1]http://www.google.com/finance

[2]http://www.msn.com/en-us/money

[3]http://espn.go.com

[4]BleacherReport.com

[5]CBSSports.com

[6]http://www.nbcsports.com

Hands down, Yahoo Finance is a much better site than Marketwatch. I'm picking on Marketwatch since you say that it can replace Yahoo Finance.

Here are a few data points:

Interface - YF has all the three indices information (S&P, Dow and Nasdaq) right in front of you. MW has this in a small box on the right. While this may seem trivial, over a period of time - YF sticks but MW doesn't.

Content - All the content above the fold on YF is related to the markets. If you look at MW , for instance there is an article filling up which airline features you should pay for - totally unrelated to markets and in the main view of the fold. This is not a one time phenomenon, but happens all the time. One of the reasons I stopped using MW.

Quote lookup - The quotes are all on the left and the lookup bar is right below the quotes. Also if you look up a stock and revisit the home page, that information is stored - without requiring you to sign up. SO you can just build a portfolio of stocks without even signing up. (Of course, if you clear your cookies this will be lost). Try doing this on MW - The quote look up bar isn't even obvious ( you have to hit on the search button to make it visible).

I can go on and on about feature comparison but what I'm trying to get at is - Yahoo Finance is one of the most usable sites when it comes to market information for a vast majority of users interested in the markets. They have carried over the same interface to other geographies as well. For example yahoo finance India isn't drastically different from Yahoo Finance US. So it wouldn't be really wise for a company to just abandon that user base.

I was pretty sure someone will make a comment like yours. You didn't disappoint. You want to me to go to 3 different sites for Finance when I can get everything at Yahoo! You want me to go to 4 different sites for Sports when I can get everything at Yahoo! Can you get Bleacher Report articles on ESPN? I will suggest comparing Yahoo! Finance and Sports with the sites you mentioned. You might be surprised that most sites you mentioned feed to Yahoo! and not vice-versa. I can go to all the sites you mentioned or just go to Yahoo!

Each mentioned site is missing something that is available on Yahoo! Either you browse through all the articles on Bleacher Report or you can see the most relevant ones on Yahoo! That is the difference.

Remember the keywords Portal, curated information, relevant information, comprehensive. None of the sites you mentioned are at a level of Yahoo!

>You want to me to go to 3 different sites for Finance when I can get everything at Yahoo! You want me to go to 4 different sites for Sports when I can get everything at Yahoo!

What? No. He/she meant that any of those sites can replace Yahoo by themselves, not that all of them are required.

I meant each site is as good as yahoo! not that you would have to go to each one, but I don't really care about sports. The finance sites are all drop in replacements and better than yahoo finance.

As for sports, if you want the same information but the caveat you seem hung up on is that it must come from different domains, just go to a reddit like aggregator. I get it, you like yahoo. Yahoo does a good job, and I also like yahoo. My point is it is patently rediculous to claim there is no other space on the internet that is close enough to Yahoo sports or finance.

Companies don't survive being ~10% better than the competition, and the stuff you are talking about sounds like it is moire about habit than anything tangible.

> The finance sites are all drop in replacements and better than yahoo finance.

I completely disagree with that. I tried for over a year to switch from Yahoo to Google for finance and found it completely lacking, despite the nicer UI. The only site that can match Yahoo finance in my opinion is the Motley Fool. I still use both.

It's also going to get more difficult for Yahoo to differentiate itself as a curator/creator as it gets more difficult to survive on the Internet producing differentiated content.

Within sports, Grantland tried producing content that was different, and died. GigaOM tried focusing on enterprise tech, and died. FiveThirtyEight served policy wonks, and is struggling to attract a meaningful audience. The verdict is out on Vox, but they also may go within 18 months.

Yahoo has tried to solve this problem by hiring 'star names' but it doesn't seem to have moved the needle. People are happy to take the commodity churn article from Bleacher Report.

Oh, and to top all that off, it's unclear that there's really any serious money to be made from online content / eyeballs anyway.

Which is to say that even if they could execute on the 'trusted source of content' business model, it may not be enough to save them anyway.

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how people actually use the web today. "Portal" is an amazing video game and a 1990's buzzword.

Why would anyone rely on a single "portal" for content? A "portal" like Yahoo(!) was relevant when connections were slow and the potential of the internet was still nascent. That was 20 years ago.

These days, just open a new tab with a new site. Open 10 new tabs with 10 different sites. It's not that complicated.

Yahoo is the fifth most popular website in the world. People actually use it.

facebook is a portal. People spend a lot of time on facebook you may have noticed

"When Yahoo! was founded, there was a need for WWW site directory, and Yahoo! filled that vacuum. ... IMO, Yahoo! need to go back to their roots which was portal of curated information."

Yahoo's Directory was shut down December 27, 2014.

What's left of Yahoo does some photo storage, some email, some video streaming, some finance and sports reporting, and some ad serving. They also resell Bing search. All those things are done better by others.

> All those things are done better by others.

It's highly debatable whether anyone does flickr "better". 500px, for example, have descended to suddenly announcing that they'll give away licenses for the photos you pay them to host and reward you with "exposure".

Could you expand on that? I'd be quite concerned to find my photos being licensed for commercial use without my consent.

The "Distribution Network" document, which was updated a month or so ago (https://licensing.500px.com/distribution/) under the "Content publishing partners". Sony, Google/chromcast, and Samsung all have the right to use your material uncompensated.

There is an opt-out box buried away in your preferences, but (in a shitty move) you also have to opt out of selling your images through partners at the same time - you can't disable only uncompensated use.

Beat me to it again. ;) Directory was my favorite part of Yahoo. People giving me the links I need in an organized fashion. It was one of the early forms of online serendipity: look for one thing you need or want only to find a bunch of other pieces of info with benefit.

Many forms of it now but I still think Directory could be revived. Maybe exceed the old one with curators for high profile topics plus crowd input. Some hybrid model.

I've not found a good replacement for Yahoo Finance's free daily historical data.

Product aside, "When Yahoo! was founded", there was a need for high traffic web properties that could scale past a few hundred users. I think we forget about how 10k simultaneous connections was a big freaking deal back then. Yahoo! wasn't just a useful site, it was one of the only usable sites under heavy load.

Neither are very good and I think there would be a rush to fill the gap with superior offerings.

15 years after using Yahoo! For the first time I realize that it is still a directory...

I think a good idea would be to host an innovation challenge.

They are already bringing in outside consultants from McKinsey, but in this day and age, how about turning to the crowd for help? If they posted significant cash prices (say $1m total) and let their users vote on the best ideas, I bet they could find some fresh directions.

Also bet it would cost a fraction of what they pay McKinsey.

Edit: In fact, why stop there. How about making it a quarterly challenge. With follow-ups on what ideas they decided to work on and progress reports. Make Yahoo the People's company. Just my 2 cents.

Even the best idea will face the hostility of a management that brought the company to where it is today. It never works.

Definitely.

Everyone who is there now and especially rose through the ranks at some point stood behind and toed the line that brought them to that point ("Cheered for more desktop ads, agreed and liked the 'Mavens' metric"). Now they'd face a significant cognitive dissonance if they did an about face and said "Yap that was stupid, what were we thinking!?". It just doesn't happen.

It can only happen with new people, so a lot of existing ones have to be pushed out of the door. But new ones take a while to on-board, they are outsiders and so on, they'll face internal resistance in the changes they propose.

It's the downward spiral of doom. They'll start laying off people to save money. The more people they lay off, the less likely good people would want to go work there. The less progress they'll make, so they'll have to lay off more people etc.

If they lay off the right people, it's more likely good people would want to go work there. Those good people would be able to make more progress with less unnecessary pushback from people experiencing cognitive dissonance, and the layoffs would slow and ultimately hiring (of more good people) could pick up.

McKinsey isn't going to get them there. That's a move of a dying company. Marissa Mayer needs to do this herself. If she doesn't know who the right people are to keep versus release, that's a bad sign.

Unless Jerry Yang wants to and can pull a Steve Jobs...

Jerry Yang already pulled a Steve Jobs with his Alibaba investment. He just never gets the credit for it.

Well I can't speak to their internal culture, but if it's either take advice from outside, or go under, maybe management over there needs to re-evaluate its priorities.

> They are already bringing in outside consultants from McKinsey, but in this day and age, how about turning to the crowd for help? If they posted significant cash prices (say $1m total) and let their users vote on the best ideas, I bet they could find some fresh directions.

It would be fun to watch, but the markets would rightly interpret it as "we have no idea what we're doing".

If I read the article right, it looks like the investors already think that :)

Seriously though, if you use enough buzz-words, like crowd-sourced virtual incubator, or Kickstarter for Innovation, or whatever, I'm sure you could sell the idea to all the stakeholders somehow.

I see, very good. Other options for branding the idea: Yahoo Ventures, Yahoo 20% Time (for internal "ideation"). In fact I'm now convinced it's a good idea!

One problem I think with that (at least in principle) is that the people who are already with the company, and (at least hypothetically) have some sort of desire / incentive to see the company succeed, have a particular skillset.

To completely abandon that skillset in order to form fit the company to the most popular idea from the crowd could possibly be disastrous. Perhaps it would work if they made a conscious effort to ensure the idea the crowd proposed aligned well with the skillset / experience the employees already have.

> They are already bringing in outside consultants from McKinsey

This usually means a the execs need to take a political difficult action (layoffs, etc.) and need the "cover" of a highly paid firm to look like "experts" suggested it to redirect blame away from the execs.

>I think a good idea would be to host an innovation challenge.

>They are already bringing in outside consultants from McKinsey

i think these 2 things are incompatible to say the least. McKinsey indicate completely different stage in a company lifecycle.

I didn't know that McKinsey knows Tech.

I think yes, though a lot smaller. Yahoo is used by millions in Asia because of how well it caters to the local languages, as opposed to google which is a distinctly foreign product with some translations skinned on top.

http://www.scmp.com/article/1007460/yahoo-still-hks-top-sear...

Their clients are paying them still. They are the advertisers, which I take you are not.

Doesn't the talk about "when you are not the consumer yada yada" does not apply for the convenience of your argument?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com