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Comment by kleer001 | Hacker News Reader

I liked Yahoo pipes, but they're super limited compared to IFTTT

Pipes is a dead product, it's just waiting for someone to remember to turn off the light. Even in 2011 it was on life support.

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.

> Pipes is a dead product

It totally is. Is there something that can rise from the ashes or was it just a waste?

At least when I was at Yahoo (many years ago), there was zero apparent desire to even continue to operate in that type of service space. I guess Yahoo wants to be a media company and sell ads, not provide APIs to do nerd stuff for free.

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 have never used Yahoo pipes, but I found IFTTT to be quite limited when I tried it earlier this year. There are no booleans, pipeline control, arguments, scheduling, reuse, etc. I know this tool wasn't written for me, but these are things that I would derive real value from.

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.

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