Ask HN: If you were in charge of yahoo, what would you do? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: If you were in charge of yahoo, what would you do?

15 pointsniccolop28 comments

Curious to hear what people would do, everyone is doubting Carol Bartz, probably rightly. What about an acquisition? Or change of CEO?

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Focus on a few successful products. And focus on adding value.

A long time ago Yahoo was what now is Yahoo Directory: http://dir.yahoo.com/ It rocked. Now it seems to be unmaintained and there's nothing today like that. Resurrecting it with quality links (no content farms, About.com, Experts Exchange, etc.) would be an alternative to SEO-pwned search engines.

There is the Open Directory Project (http://www.dmoz.org/). I haven't used it much, but it feels a lot like the original Yahoo.

I know. Dmoz is better than Yahoo Directory, but they are both far worse than Yahoo Directory in its heyday.

Because YD in its "heyday" existed in a much smaller world with little SEO knowledge.

Absolutely agree with this. The Internet has become a giant boardwalk scam powered by google search and google adwords. We are making too many assumptions about the quality of google's results and forgetting about what made categorized quality links great about yahoo... hint: a human verified them.

Would categorized links work for instantly updated info? Absolutely not, but the vast majority of searches have nothing to do with what happened in the last 24 hours. Look, it's a great achievement what google has done over the years and I don't think they're maliciously or purposefully trying to force content creators to produce shitty content, but it's definitely something that has gotten much worse over the past couple years. Without a real competitor in the space (and really, I don't see a sea-change in search coming anytime soon) then content publishers will continue to game the system, not only forcing farmed content on us, but forcing the quality content providers to resort to crazy advertising schemes just to stay afloat. Everyone loses.

It would not surprise me if 40% of adword/adsense revenue was based on design practices of misdirection. I wouldn't feel so strongly about it if I didn't think it removed the chance for small, independent, honest publishers to make money in its place.

Yahoo needs to eat it's pride and become the little guy. The one who cares about quality.

Sell it and buy an island.

I'm sure there are good people working there. Have an independent firm hire some top notch developers and efficiency experts to come in, identify them, then split off a company with those people in it and call it something else like "Good Yahoo". ;) Then, sell the rest off in pieces.

Seriously though, it is a tough nut. They are still mostly known for an outdated search index. They have no winning product in the public mindshare. They are old. Marketing could fix that, if they had a super product/service to sell. But don't base that product/service's success on ad revenue. They can't compete with the big boys on that, nor can they make much money handing it off to them.

Buy Twitter, Zynga, Foursquare, Quora, and Groupon. Let them be independent for a long while. Yahoo does have a market cap of $19 billion - might as well use it.

They actually tried to buy Foursquare.

I actually just commented on this on a recent Kara Swisher article http://kara.allthingsd.com/20100929/exclusive-major-meltdown...

The basic idea started with the idea of completely changing the company name to a name that can play well with their sub-brands, because of the poor connotation or generic feel that the name "Yahoo" brings to some people's mind.

I went on to cite Kraft as an example. They have a jillion products that have their own brands. Oreo Cookies. A1 Steak Sauce. Crystal Light. Cool Whip. Each of those have very different audiences to speak to. Kids, steak-eaters, weight-watchers, sweet-tooths. So each has their own brand that speaks uniquely to those audiences. Kraft has a brand on its own, but it stands in the background, allowing each of their products to act on their own for each product's best interest.

I believe this system could greatly benefit Yahoo. Instead of trying to brand their properties Yahoo so-and-so, allow those properties to break free from the Yahoo brand, so they can serve each of the unique audiences properly. Sports, finance, news, gossip, music etc.

I believe the Kraft example matches them very well. Humongously large company with a huge number of products that serve a wide-range of differing audiences. Kraft doesn't try to sell "Kraft" with each of their products, because that would confuse those products brands. You wouldn't have a commercial that sells "Kraft A1 Steak Sauce." Likewise, I think it's wrong for Yahoo to try to sell "Yahoo" with each of their products.

Flickr is an example of a successful Yahoo property that has no hindrances of the Yahoo brand. They were acquired of course, but Yahoo made the smart decision not to mess with it. But if had grown within Yahoo, then they would have called it something like "Yahoo Photos". How lame would that have been? It's like "Yahoo Music", or "Yahoo Movies." Those names just don't inspire.

So basically, I think it should be an excerside of allowing their properties to diversify, grow, and focus on each of their unique audiences from a branding and marketing perspective, rather than trying to unify the Yahoo brand among them all.

I'd cut everything that isn't profitable. Cut the employee base to the very, very minimum. Return as much as possible to the shareholders. Start paying a dividend.

"What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders." -- Michael Dell on Apple, 1997

http://news.cnet.com/Dell-Apple-should-close-shop/2100-1001_...

In all fairness, without the return of Jobs that probably would have been ok.

I did spend almost three years there.

I agree. Yahoo is floundering because there is no focus. The company's tentacles are in every pot, the typical "Jack of all trades, master of none."

They desperately need a Mark Hurd. Someone ruthless, someone aggressive, someone with the balls to say, "no."

To some extent though, that's what Bartz has been getting wrong. Even managing to anger some of their best partners.

That's a tough job. I'd start by pumping all brand promotion efforts away from Yahoo itself, into the various Yahoo Sites (finance, games, etc.) and away from search. Yahoo is so established in search, that it isn't necessary to promote that aspect of the company. Plus, it would be easier to establish that Yahoo is the leader in financial analysis and shopping results than trying to convince users that Yahoo can still hang with Google in search- it's an uphill battle not worth fighting.

After a bit of time passed, when it became visible what segments have potential, and what does not. It's time to cut. Surgically and decisively. The only way for Yahoo to compete in user-based web services is, in my opinion, to follow the Jack Welch method for cleaning up GE- cut everything that cannot make a reasonably stab at being the market leader. It saved GE from near certain doom. Under that same policy, GE has cut consumer electronics, their bread and butter for the first 50 years, but they are powerful and dominating in the spaces they do play in. Yahoo may have to ultimately drop search- it seems absurt to say it though. But as a company Yahoo has to trim the fat and cut the underperforming sectors. It's make or break time.

edit:Typos

Yeah - Yahoo! could certainly use some Welchian / Michael Porter strategic sense. The problem is that Google needs to do that too. That's why I think they should sell Flickr to Google - it's a much better fit for Google than Yahoo!

Delicious is a dog - I don't use it any more. To be fair, I don't use Digg, Reddit or StumbleUpon either. I get my traffic from Twitter, DZone, Reddit Programming and here.

Upcoming is an interesting situation. We use it here in PDX for some things, but we have our own local event calendar, Calagator.org. There's also Meetup.com and Eventbrite and Facebook calendars. I'm not sure anyone really owns that space, but at least Meetup has a revenue model.

Yahoo is still the 3rd most popular site in the world. It's not failing by far. So I would not go in there thinking the company is failing: http://www.google.com/adplanner/static/top1000/

I agree with your sentiment, I suppose the real question is how can they not only hold their position, but grow, and encourage great hackers to get excited about their platforms, and be more innovative with them.

I would open source Pipes and YQL. I would shut down Delicious, sell Flickr to Google and try to find a buyer for Upcoming. Really, I think the best thing that's left in Yahoo! is Finance - I'd build that up.

Shut down Delicious? Why? It's a goldmine of crowdsourced links valued by someone (assuming bots haven't taken over...)

sniff

Firewall the media-play from any technology that hasn't yet been murdered in the cradle, and make sure than each has the resources and direction needed to survive effectively; different strategies for each.

Bring back Geocities (yea it sucked, but it's part of the history of the internet)

Bring back their own branded search (kill the Bing contract)

Bring back Yahoo Shopping APIs

Kill Yahoo Messenger (there are more bots than users there).

The valuation of Yahoo assets in Asia is about the same to the current market cap. The bold move is to focus on emerging markets and move headquarter there.

a) Look to buy innovative startups. b) Solve the no-appstore-for-web-apps problem, win over developers by making this a nice rollout platform with simple cloud JSON data storage, search integration, social integration etc.

Double down on BOSS, open up monetization and let 1,000 niche search engines bloom (yahoo monetization is a nightmare right now). Double down on YUI, support niche deal sites. Start a venture fund and make seed 100 $1M seed investments in Yahoo platform companies. Yahoo's best assets are their dev platforms and their developers.

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