Yahoo Wants to Blind the Competition With Science

hacking != science

Yahoo needs to compete on product, not algorithms.

Yahoo Mail did nothing while Gmail made continuous progress towards a great product and earned market share.

Yahoo did nothing while Twitter grew into a monster. Yahoo could have crushed Twitter if they had simply adapted or expanded YIM while Twitter's servers were flailing.

Advertising is the one area Yahoo has retained some leadership (rightmedia), but they aren't blinding the competition with that science.

Yahoo needs creativity. It needs product vision. It needs to stop resting on prior accomplishments and start building if it wants to recapture the attention of consumers.

Science should be a supporting character to creativity.

For those who were confused (as I was), Prabhakar Raghavan wasn't the one who recently died, it was his co-author in Randomized Algorithms, Rajeev Motwani.

BTW, I highly recommend their book. In it is all the evidence of the genesis of Google.

Whenever I hear "pure science" I think of this:

http://www.vonnegutweb.com/catscradle/cats_nytimes.html

From the article : "But what problems are left to be solved?"

To ensure that Web companies (like Yahoo!) are keeping their API open, accessible and active.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1611718

That's some prompt paid advertisement to reply to PG.

I hope they take it seriously though.