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Why did it fail, do you think? I thought it was an outstanding product in terms of both functionality and UI, but it never seemed to gain traction.

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Several reasons I can think of. For one, no one at Yahoo seemed to understand what Pipes was for (part of a wider problem where Yahoo didn't seem to know what the company was for).

For another, Yahoo legal prevented us from doing any kind of long-term storage of RSS feeds. That made the service far less useful than it could have been.

Finally, they didn't give it any resources at all. Management was too preoccupied with the failed Brickhouse project (internal startup incubator) and the host of failed ideas that it spawned.

no one at Yahoo seemed to understand what Pipes was for

What was Pipes for?

Filtering and triggering without the annoyance of having to write code in some syntax-of-the-month or dredge through poorly written documentation for half-ass APIs.

> legal prevented us from doing any kind of long-term storage of RSS feeds

Wait, is there something legally wrong about storing RSS feed data?

If you are redistributing, hosting or using it commercially you have to have the agreement of the author of the content. RSS just gives you access in another way than HTML, but it does not circumvent copyright.

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