Oil Traders May Be the Only Ones Who Want Yahoo to Survive
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
FWIW, nat gas traders still use Aol Instant Messenger.
I doubt they would pay $5 per user. or even a <your yearly salary> year flat fee.
and since they will not pay, you will have to run it on ads. And supporting online/mobile offerings (that do not have their requirement of local client/local logs) will always give you more money.
it is a lose/lose situation.
Isn't that the basis of enterprise linux?
Not to mention that any enterprise Linux user worth their salt has an expensive support contract with a major vendor (such as Red Hat). Either that, or they're confident that they have the in-house resources to support it. No enterprise user considers Linux to be "free as in beer", by any stretch of the imagination; rather, they're using it because it's the right tool for the job.
It would be a good way to teach an industry with plenty of money the virtue of paying for mission-critical services. Given that the industry runs on a service like Yahoo's, it's a pretty good bet that you could slip an innocuous looking change to the privacy policy past them.
A buyer that tried to "sell it to them as an industry specific chat service" would destroy it in the process.
If something is absolutely critical to the running of your business, then at some point you need to at least consider paying for it.
A good example I'm familiar with is within electronic sports (competitive video-games): almost every executive, player, personality, etc has been using Skype since ~2010. Unfortunately, Skype has a large number of security vulnerabilities and users can be subjected by DDOS attacks- which is especially important if such an attack impacts their performance in a game, or interrupts a livestream. Even though there are, arguably, better products being created that serve the same purpose as Skype and that don't fall victim to this problem (Discord, Slack), those within the industry don't want to segment themselves from everyone else.
People comment on the queer nature of this phenomenon frequently but seemingly fail to understand that it's that way because We The People made up laws dictating that it should be that way. There is no deprivation of either possession or use of property here, so why did we make this illegal? Let's fix the problem and allow true competition, instead of protecting lumbering incumbents.
Besides, many superior solutions exist and have for a long time: TeamSpeak, Ventrilo, Mumble. Skype is laggy, buggy, and high memory overhead, without mentioning the DDOS risk (exposes IP).
Truthfully I would not consider TeamSpeak, Ventrillo, or Mumble as a superior solution. The benefit of Skype has always been that it dod not require joining more than one server. In the article example, consider the line about individuals having their Yahoo username on their badge.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-20/yahoo-bid...
It was quite popular in Eastern Europe as an IRC replacement since IRC was too difficult for the less computer savvy.
These days most people have switched to Facebook Messanger since nobody wants the hassle if installing another messenger app.
That's pretty impressive for a country that has never even been visited by an oil tanker.
We are also subject to relatively draconian surveillance [1].
[1] https://www.bestvpn.com/blog/30241/switzerland-passes-severe...
The commodity trade in Switzerland is as old as the hills.
About as old as a 166-year-old artificial hillock, yes.
Yahoo clearly did not know why the oil industry is using Yahoo Messenger. Instead of doubling down and building a product for that market, they build a replacement product that's going to be detached from the needs of its users.
It's like Yahoo had all these tenements for the past decade and it's only when the tenements are expiring they finally found out there's bonanza of gold beneath, but it's way too late to do anything about it. With the new Yahoo chat product, it's like they registered some tenements next to their present ones and say something like "hey we got something nearby so it'll be alright."
When I asked why they haven't switched, I was given a response similar to what the articles says, "that all regulatory and internal controls are addressed"
I believe natural gas communication is still done by AIM a lot.
Lots of U.S. securities trading happens over AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). When I traded equity derivatives, I'd have three communication tools open: internal IM, Bloomberg chat and AIM.
The porn industry still uses ICQ.
As far as I know it's just 'tradition', like the oil industry - once ICQ hit critical mass it became the de facto standard.
Seemed crazy at the same, still does now too
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP#Connecting_to_other_proto...
Yahoo could assure their financial future by going massively long oil futures and then putting out false messages about Saudi Arabia having been nuked by ISIS or some such. A tad illegal perhaps but an offshoot in some ill policed part of the world could do it.
Not using a free IM service like Yahoo's seems like a fiduciary sin.
Hard to see a harbormaster with a Bloomberg terminal.
I absolutely see the reason for the ops side to be on YIM. But the traders? At the end of the day, in well regulated markets, that's just asking for trouble when the regulators come calling.
Lets say there's some problem at a port (bad weather, labor strike, whatever) that causes delays in the delivery of (other people's) oil, traders are still going to be interested because it will push up the price, even though if they're not taking delivery from that particular ship.
Speculation on price is not done by taking paper positions in one direction, but by limiting or increasing your paper hedge, aka trading the "basis" or margin between your physical and your paper.
The physical side requires a fair amount of "RTFC" ("caring what the harbormaster is saying") and being aware of operations.
As an example we were given in training, one of our grains trader went to inspect a ship before loading it with grain, and the local guy thought something was dodgy so he closed the doors, and shone his torch at the walls. Thousands of "stars" blinked back at them. Turns out the ship had been used recently to carry broken glass, which obviously made it highly unsuitable for grains.
But the more common stuff is e.g. overloading the ship on one side so that it leans on the side you know the controller will measure the load, or playing with the percentage admixture (basically dead beasts and dirt) to net yourself a bit more margin.
These are physical traders -- they actually have a heavy workload in terms of communicating with everyone associated with delivery.
Boat captains, harbormasters, mine supervisors, you name it.
I work in physical trading and use yahoo on a daily basis to trade swaps, execute physical deals, and chat with customers. If yahoo were to drop support unexpectedly, there would be a pretty large problem.
We have already been briefed by our IT departments that we are moving to another service with the front end being one of the following - IceChat(from the ICE exchange), Reuters, Bloomberg, Trillian. Although Yahoo will be the back-end in protocol sense, I believe that will be phased out once the trade migrates to another service.
It's a bigger problem than most imagine and can't be executed at a drop of a hat due to legal compliance in logging all communications in the case something went awry or other similar situations.
I sense a business opportunity here; perhaps artisanal, organic, locally sourced oil sandwiches?