That being said, it's nice to see Yahoo do something well.
The HN crowd seems to be pretty tired of Yahoo. I know I am. I'm disappointed that they never made a good Flickr mobile app, and sad about what Yahoo did with del.icio.us. A few years ago, those were two of my favorite web services. No longer.
Other issues: the quality of Yahoo Answers is a running joke. Yahoo Groups sorely needs to be remodeled, but their 2010 attempt was a miserable failure. Some people are still sore about what happened to GeoCities.
Issues like these set expectations among a certain audience. I admit I don't expect Yahoo to hit a home run these days.
Yet there are people (non-techy folks) in my family who have used Yahoo for over ten years for their mail, news, and search. When they've had problems, I've tried to talk them into switching to something better, but they like Yahoo. So there you go.
To each their own. But after my recent poor experiences with Yahoo, I don't feel guilty that my expectations are set low. I'm not rooting for them to fail, but I can't help feeling fairly cynical about them.
That said, Axis is an interesting strategy for them. I don't know how it will work out but its clear they they are not going to go willingly into receivership. So in that regard I cheer them on, some of the best inventions come out of desperation and it is soooooo much easier to ship something untried in a desperate company than it is in a market leading company.