Top 10 Mistakes of Yahoo
Besides gaining top traffic rank in alexa and popular as it may seem but Yahoo still has its own set of mistakes.The Yahoo website is cluttered with so many bits and pieces. This is not appealing to many people so they look for other search engine like Google.Moreover Here is a list of top 10 mistakes of Yahoo.
- Microsoft deal controversy :They are too arrogant. They turned down Microsoft, it was a good deal for them but they did not accept the offer.
- Unable to advantages of been old in the market : Few years ago they were the best search engine but then came Google; they got old and they never have enough efforts to regain dominance.
- Lack of multi business model : They are trying to compete with Google Adsense. Why not think of other business model that can bring them in to the top of the game again.
- Terry Semel is a mistake ? The guy doesn’t have the talent to lead the company. His track record will show that he is not the man for the job.
- Lost the chance to take over Google : In initial days Google founders were looking for the investors.At that time after joining Yahoo, the company founders of yahoo (Jerry Yang and David Filo ) thinks of buying Google.Again Terry Semel had dinner conversation with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.Semel propose for paying only $7 million annually on Google search technology.They replied that they wanted $1 billion and didn’t want to sell Google. Semel said he would consider the deal and need time to think about the price.Fortunately in another dinner and Semel agreed to the $1 billion but alas Larry Page and Sergey Brin replied back with a higher demand of $3 billion and didn’t want to sell.
- Yahoo Music is a flop, they should have not ventured into the music selling business. It is too crowded.
- Yahoo Messenger is now a portal for viruses. They have to do something about this or else people will look for alternatives and will turn away from YM.Yahoo messenger is quite popular and yahoo should consider this too be under their special Research and development labs.
- They did not successfully venture into social networking.(Yahoo mash was another FAIL) – updated (thanks to kevin)
- In the near future cloud computing will be the name of the game but Yahoo did not have any moves to conceptualize a cloud-computing environment.
- Yahoo did not venture into the mobile phone business. It is one of the biggest gadgets today and in the future.People want to be free and mobile and yahoo should consider this seriously.
These mistakes will never stop the company from moving forward so there is still a bright future for Yahoo.
Honey Singh is Head of Operations & Strategic Planning at MediaZo. He has an experience of 5 years in designing, ideating/operating digital/social marketing strategies for global brands. You can also catch him on Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook , Google+ & Instagram.
February 24th, 2009 at 3:26 am
About point 9: Yahoo! is actually one of the pioneers in the field, albeit they work behind the scenes. They are one of the biggest contributors to the Apache Hadoop project.
About point 8: They did take a shot at social networking. First with Yahoo! 360, then with Yahoo! M.A.S.H. (both of which I used). 360 is no longer actively developed and MASH is dead. They’ve a different concept now where they’re integrating social functionality into Yahoo! homepage and Yahoo! Mail.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Yeah, Ankur..
Their is a simple Rule for common audience – “What you see is what you get”.
Please note that 90% of the audience in the internet is not aware of back door process and only intellectual consider about the experiments.
This 90% is the real internet (though don’t forget about yourself in rest 10%).
Early and effectively is the key to success.
Point9 is not early and Point 8 is not effectively.
Yahoo have so many fabulous intellectuals and they should not develop the clone of twitter but ventured them self into new way of buzz.
For examples: They should develop a whole new platform for mobile devices and may ventured into some innovative range.
Note: Feel free to condemned me with your own points!
February 24th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Well…with Apache Hadoop they _were_ early.
They wer one of the first supporters. Yes, Yahoo! has not ventured into micro-blogging but then even Google’s effort with Jaiku has been a failure.
Yahoo! does have a platform for mobiles – it’s called Yahoo! Mobile Web, which is the successor of Yahoo! Go. Yahoo! Research has given a lot of new and innovative features such as SearchMonkey too. Moreover, for the past few months Yahoo! has actually been _gaining_ market share in the search engine market. (Google is at something like 67%, Yahoo! is at 21%, others make up the rest) This is no doubt because of the new and innovative features they’re bringing in SearchMonkey is one; and even before Google started including PlusBox results to search Yahoo! had been doing it for months already.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
@ankurb That’s why you commented so fast on the “mistakes of yahoo” http://is.gd/kEev
February 25th, 2009 at 2:27 am
Apache Hadoop may be early or SearchMonkey may be good but if you analyze the progress graph then it have steady flow unline google.
If Yahoo guys had make up the deal with the Google then they definitely become supremo of the internet but alas they don’t.
Terry Semel had done many faults which can not be recovered now.Yahoo Music is also unable to beat the market.
I’m describing the faults of yahoo because every one doesn’t know about it.Moreover i do agree with your points on the Google and this is the only reasons why my next post will be on the mistakes of the Google.
Seems you volunteered yourself for the official marketing of the Yahoo.As after so much discussion on twitter where @jeetblog @praval @abhishek @twilightfairy @rajeshlalwani and @xAbhishek also ventured with you on the topic of ” Y!mail vs Gmail” (which arises after the heavy downtime of the gmail service).
February 25th, 2009 at 2:41 am
Yes, Terry Semel was one of the worst things to happen to Yahoo! Agree with you on that one.
February 26th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Thanks ankur
From meeting with you and your works i must need to appraise your level of knowledge and intense web skills.
February 26th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Thanks
March 1st, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Probably you need to correct “They did not venture into social networking.” – They did (Yahoo! Mash), but did not successful in that. http://mash.yahoo.com/ & http://i-stuff.blogspot.com/2007/09/mash-new-social-networking-service-from.html
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:19 am
Thanks Kevin,
Point no 8 is updated now.
(“The Yahoo! Mash Beta service has shut down.”)
March 15th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
I think Yahoo was always going to have problems as rivals arrived to challenge their inflexibility and limited vision, and end users became more knowledgeable. Yahoo’s problems are years old. They did not work on their search engine technology when they had fewer rivals. They had a tendency to be greedy – for marketing purposes, everything connected with Yahoo tended to be more cumbersome, require more sign-up, be more bloated. Since their early days they have not introduced a single innovation, and Web 2.0 completely surprised them.
Examples: many people refuse to visit their homepage because it’s such a mess – compare with google, or even igoogle; they are even now, wasting opportunities in an area where they have no direct rivals – Yahoo Groups. Due to their short-sightedness, they don’t allow users to participate fully in the groups unless they sign up for Yahoo mail. Or also: Why don’t they go multi-protocol with Yahoo messenger, so that it has a chance of being used by more than ten-year olds?
Their corporate philosophy is terrible. The days for those exclusive deals have gone, and if they can’t realise that, then the future is bleak for them. They will be the next Lycos if they are not very careful. I think missing the google train was historic, but missing Microsoft might be fatal.
March 16th, 2009 at 1:51 am
Every company wants to improve their products but the question is how they improve?
Yahoo is trying harder to enhance their services but they are not so effective.
for example:Yahoo is trying to work on their UI
http://techcrunch.com/2009/03/12/new-yahoo-home-page-caught-in-the-wild/
January 23rd, 2010 at 1:57 am
It is really bad that Yahoo Messenger has been a medium for viruses to spread out. I remember one time I ended up almost mad at someone who I thought was spreading the virus to me. But obviously he was innocent and a victim too. I hope that Yahoo has learned a lot from these mistakes and able to catch up with the competition.
.-= Google Fan Blog´s last blog ..Share Links Easier with Google URL Shortener =-.
January 25th, 2010 at 3:40 am
Top 10 Mistakes of Yahoo http://bit.ly/7nIP1o #yahoo
January 25th, 2010 at 3:42 am
Top 10 Mistakes of Yahoo http://bit.ly/7nIP1o #yahoo via @djbhai
February 22nd, 2010 at 11:18 pm
I said before in a few of my blog posts that I lost my “Internet virginity” to Yahoo’s directory back around 1993/1994. It was sooo AMAZING. I met cool peeps on the Net via CyberFriends thanks to Yahoo’s directory.
Our Sun workstations in the CompSci lab had Netscape running and I’d spend hours cruising this new realm we now call cyber space. For that, I will ALWAYS have a special place in my heart for Yahoo. But their Search started to return crappy results and then this clean-shaven search engine, Google, came out of no where around 1994/95 and I was like, “Wow!!”
I even wrote them back then on my Cyrix 6X86 powered desktop and told them “how cool” their search engine was. Then they replied to my email, asked for my mailing address (on campus at Western Univwersity, London Ontario Canada) and sent me some Google stickers for my desktop and a mouse pad too.
I’ve always felt that Yahoo’s page designers were more creative than Google’s. They did have the edge with the Yahoo Shops (eCommerce) after buying out ViaWeb. Also, I was a big IM user, but it got so spammy and I’d always get all of these WHORES wanting to “connect” with me. They could still overhaul this and fix up the security. But I believe the brand that is Yahoo is still very much viable.
Personally, I’d love to seem them & Google merge. They’re both excellent web companies and the synergies (no evil, Stanford founders, etc.) would be INCREDIBLE.
.-= Maxwell´s last blog ..10 Great Open Source Windows apps =-.
February 23rd, 2010 at 12:04 am
@maxwell As i commented on Top 10 mistakes of Google, similarly we discussed about the few loopholes of Yahoo which is not aimed to show them down.
We know that Yahoo have few best designs and their best contributions in YUI library , moreover i still prefer to go for Flick rather than Picasa but the points in listed here are on “few mistakes” out of several Yahoo owned sites and services.
February 20th, 2011 at 4:38 pm
There is need to correct your article in point no 3 $ 6..