Hacker News Reader

Comment by thejerz | Hacker News Reader

If Marissa hired me, I'd tell her, "Throw away everything and focus your team 100% on search." Search is her core competency -- so stop pretending to be a media mogul and get down to what you know best. Web search is far from done, and it has loads of potential. It's her "iPod."

How ironic would it be Yahoo displaced Google, because Google had lost their focus on doing one thing (search) and doing it really well?

View on HN

Funny, I got the opposite impression. I would tell her "Throw away everything and focus 100% on mid- to low-brow content." More celebrity blogs, fantasy sports, etc. Yahoo has a lot of unsophisticated eyeballs, but they're not a tech leader.

I don't know, that seems like fighting the last war ("Generals always fight the last war"...)

Microsoft has a 5 year head start and has spent billions on this and they are nowhere close to Google (I'm not even talking tech, just market share).

I think the only way to beat Google at this point is by winning the next war (Yahoo! already missed mobile). Just like no one beat Microsoft at operating systems or productivity software; the world just moved on from caring about those things. Of course, no one knows what the next battle will be.

Of course, beating Google is somewhat of a red herring; they don't necessarily need to lose for Yahoo! to win.

I thought they dropped search years ago. Nowadays their search is powered by Bing?

It is. But that doesn't mean they can't rebuild it (it will NOT be easy, but they have the $$$ to splurge on a talented team)

Yahoo has never been about search! They've always been a portal. They're a content company. A tabloid. They should focus on that first, services like Mail, Pipes, BOSS etc second.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com