Apple was saved through the creation of a series of world-changing products. Yahoo doesn't even seem to have creating breakthrough products as a goal. They have no excuse for not making something people want.
* Fantasy Sport
* Flickr
* Yahoo Finance
* Mayer
* Tumblr
* Alibaba sale
The first four have existed for years. I bet a lot of Tumblr users don't even know Yahoo owns Tumblr now. Yahoo search is probably getting more notice given now Yahoo search is Firefox's default search engine (at least that's the case in North America).
Yahoo has some great ideas like the Digest app and doing some great mobile and streaming products, but I don't use them, and I don't always hear my coworkers and my friends talking about Yahoo (well except my friends who are working for them, but they are still pretty quiet about what they are working on).
Maybe their Yahoo Original series will catch on some fire.
It's a great example of how even when Yahoo hits on something interesting, they will neglect it and fail to profit from it. Instead IFTTT launches 4 years later and gets a $170mm valuation.
It totally is. Is there something that can rise from the ashes or was it just a waste?
I would look to Zapier or IFTTT instead. I haven't used Zapier, but the fact that they actually charge money (shocking!) gives me hope. Maybe they can actually build a business around it.
I want visual tools at a level just above a scripting language, hosted on a managed platform I can largely ignore. An API for webhooks and oauth, 3rd party API support, triggers that can run custom javascript or python... I'd pay all the money for that.