Messenger Joins the Yahoo Fail Pile

For years I've been fascinated by the sheer number of startups and services Yahoo has shuttered, leaving behind a few rich founders and thousands of abandoned users. The process seems very cavalier, if not cruel.

Opinions This comes to mind because Yahoo recently announced the upcoming demise of Yahoo Messenger. Information technology joins at least 52 companies and services Yahoo has shut down. Amidst them are GeoCities, Yahoo Kids, Upcoming, Webring, Pipes, Rocketmail, Widgets, Yahoo Directory, Delicious, ViaWeb, Yahoo Podcasts, and on and on. Were these bad ideas from the beginning? Or was it beyond the capabilities of Yahoo to manage them and eke out a turn a profit?

Fifty-fifty the products Yahoo however maintains, such as Yahoo Search, are not what they seem. Yahoo Search ruined the landscape for search by buying Inktomi, and then AlltheWeb and AltaVista equally well equally other important systems. Yahoo cast it all aside to use Google in a joint venture. And then it finally fell back onto working with Microsoft and just using Bing. That is where information technology is today.

The great irony is that Yahoo began with a kind of curated map of the internet, where categories of websites were catalogued and monitored past individuals. This thought took over the early web only got usurped by the mod search engine developed by AltaVista.

Nowadays the idea of a curated web directory is more appealing than always because the web is filled with SEO-promoted garbage, faux news, fake reviews, and scams.

And after all this, Verizon buys Yahoo for $iv.48 billion, less than the $5.7 billion Yahoo paid for Broadcast.com in 1999. And the bad luck continues as Verizon renamed the combined AOL/Yahoo every bit Oath for some unknown reason. Thus, the idea of a curated directory is over and who knows what will happen. I doubtable abandonment awaits Yahoo itself. I say this because it makes no sense to me that Verizon owns any of these properties. Information technology only seems random.

Yahoo always seemed like it meant well. And I've found the people who worked there at once or another to exist smart and entrepreneurial. There is no reason that all the creative acquisitions over the years could not have thrived and been successful or even developed and spun off at a profit. Instead, they are unceremoniously shuttered with a shrug.

About John C. Dvorak

John C. Dvorak

John C. Dvorak is a columnist for PCMag.com and the co-host of the twice weekly podcast, the No Agenda Prove. His piece of work is licensed effectually the world. Previously a columnist for Forbes, PC/Computing, Computer Shopper, MacUser, Barrons, the December Professional person every bit well as other newspapers and magazines. Onetime editor and consulting editor for InfoWorld, he besides appeared in the New York Times, LA Times, Philadelphia Enquirer, SF Examiner, and the Vancouver Sun. He was on the kickoff-upwardly squad for C/Net every bit well as ZDTV. At ZDTV (and TechTV) he hosted Silicon Spin for four years doing thousand live and live-to-tape Television shows. His Net evidence Cranky Geeks was considered a …