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Comment by vipivip | Hacker News Reader

Facebook on the path to being like Yahoo, doing everything...Yahoo tried to do everything, they failed terribly, is Facebook ship beginning to sink?

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I had the exact same thought with Google's announcement.

On the other hand, the problem's been that Yahoo wasn't actually the best anything. Casual web? AOL. Search? Anyone else, then Google. Email? Copied Hotmail, then GMail came along and they never really caught up. They purchased a bunch of top-notch companies and then let them stall into obscurity.

So, perhaps the comparison isn't going to hold up. Still, these companies should be warned.

I thought yahoo email was pretty good, and yahoo finance is probably still the best of the choices out there. But totally agree that a lot of things went to Y to die

As another comment said however, this kind of thing is right in Facebook's wheelhouse.

Social can drive group activity (my wife planned her HS class reunion mainly through FB), especially group sales.

This could be Facebook's big "monetizing" event that breaks them out of the hype area and squarely into heavy profits.

This isn't Facebook doing "everything", this is Facebook capitalizing on precisely their greatest asset: customer data.

No one is in a better position than Facebook to facilitate group buying. The synergy-meter has burst into flames.

I mean, Google tries to do everything too, and while they're certainly not always successful, they're certainly doing really well and turning huge profits.

But Google still hasn't proven whether they will be able to be profitable it ad sales tank. Of course, the fact that that haven't had to prove it implies the rest of the business is supporting the ad business at least reasonably well. Only time can truly answer that one.

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