Yahoo! was great fifteen years ago, now it’s just irrelevant. The world moved on to niche content sites and they were left behind. I can’t think of a single sector where I’d choose them over competition. I’ve heard that their web mail service is stellar but so is Gmail and I’m staying with it. It’s not like they came up with a service that was x10 times better than anything out there, far from it. They have been around since the dawn of the web and haven’t manage to build anything innovative in the last ten years. Where is Yahoo! in the whole social media thing? I mean Google tried their luck with Google+. What did Yahoo! did? They bought Tumblr and didn’t even bother to integrate it with their services.

Yahoo! has to focus on doing one thing and doing it very well. They can’t be both a services and a content shop. It doesn’t work like that. When it comes to content they have to compete with traditional news organizations that have decades of experience on the field. When was the last time you read something interesting and original on Yahoo!? For me, it’s like never. The problem though is that if they had to choose one sector that would mean massive layoffs and that in turn would send the stock way down. So that’s never going to happen, at least not unless reality hits them hard.

I feel kind of sad for them though because for me there was a time that I visited Yahoo! on a daily basis, before Google came-up with a better search algorithm and stormed the web. As with every company that was there from the beginning they hold a special place in my heart. But the reality of the web is that unless you innovate you become obsolete sooner or later.