From the category archives:

Yahoo

My Steve Ballmer near miss at Yahoo!

by Randy Stewart on February 1, 2008

in Microsoft, Yahoo

225px-Steve_ballmer_2007_outdoors2.jpgSo, here’s a little story I’ve told a few times privately, but only once publicly before. It happened so long ago at this point, and given today’s news, it doesn’t really matter to the parties involved.

After a late Friday night down on the Santa Clara campus, I decided to sleep under my desk rather than drive home to San Francisco. I woke up the next morning to a loud booming voice that I thought I recognized. “Developers, developers, developers!” Ok, he didn’t actually say that, but I shuffled to my feet only to see Steve Ballmer standing outside my cube.

I didn’t actually scream, but I might have let out a small yelp. Now, I’m too old to hate now, but then, oh man, did I hate Microsoft. If you’ve ever heard me swear before (sailor’s blushing, etc), imagine the cacophony of swear words that was going off in my head at that particular moment.

Worse than just seeing Ballmer, I saw Jerry and TK as well. The only thing I could think was, “Holy crap, we’re being acquired.”

I mean, a clandestine Saturday morning meeting between the Evil Empire and the heads of Yahoo!? What else could it be?

I said to myself, “I’m so outta here if Microsoft ever buys us.”

As this happened 8-9 years ago, nothing ever came of it (as far as I know). Jerry later told me that meeting face to face was something that they did periodically and that they did it on the weekend so folks wouldn’t freak out or speculate. I don’t know if I bought it, but it was Jerry, so I let it go.

Yahoo! Today

I worked at Yahoo! from 1996 to 2001. It was the best of times. When I started there were less than 40 people there and when I left there were 3000 people. I think that especially back then, Microsoft acquiring Yahoo! would have destroyed the company.

I don’t work at Yahoo! anymore, but just given their shear size and the maturing of the company and the industry as a whole, would it be such a bad fit now? I really can’t say for sure.

Good luck

Yahoo! has been hurting for a while in the press and their stock has been fairly depressed. A lot of the down attitude toward Yahoo! isn’t so much a reflection of the company but a constant comparison to Google and their quarter after quarter barn burners.

Google is a tough competitor. Can a combined Microsoft and Yahoo! compete effectively? I hope so.

To all my friends and the rest of the folks down in Sunnyvale – I wish you the best.

Ich bin ein Yahooer!

[Steve Ballmer photo from Wikimedia]

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Yahoo! launches a magazine? Yahoo! Food launched today

by Randy Stewart on November 2, 2006

in Yahoo

Yahoo! Food launched today and it looks like a magazine. Or at least, an online magazine. I’m not really sure where the content stops and the advertising begins.

yahoo food.jpg

What is truly weird about the food home page is the complete lack of Yahoo! branding. If there is one thing that was beaten into me at Yahoo! is that the brand (and all of the network effects that come with it) is everything. Of course, with a picture of the brand queen, Martha Stewart on the home page, maybe they figured
they couldn’t compete.

[Note:  Looks like the site may have been broken yesterday when it launched yesterday.  The page has Y! branding at the top today]

Where are the people?

The other strange thing here is that there doesn’t seem to be any community aspects of the site. While you can rate recipes that are on the site, there is no way to add recipes of your own or to even collect and share favorites on the site. While the food crowd and the del.icio.us crowd may not mix well, keeping and sharing recipes is a natural application here.

Taking it out a bit further, I think they missed another opportunity for user created content by not incorporating other forms of social media. While they incorporated video from Martha Stewart, they didn’t look within their own stable of sites. Yahoo! Video lists 48,000 videos when you do a search on the word “food.” Even if 99% of those videos are noise, 480 of those videos are good.

Finally

My first reaction was “Wow… this is huge departure for Yahoo!” Back in my day at the company, the product people designed the websites… that’s why they looked so bad. But they worked… and we liked it, and so did the public. I know that since then, they’ve hired some fancy designers and have spent a lot of time improving usability and design, but this is a major change even for Yahoo!

Nice design Yahoo!, now let’s hope you iterate this into something more fun and useful.

More on TechMeme.

Marketing Pilgrim adds that Yahoo! is finally listening to it’s customers, the advertisers.

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The state of online advertising?

October 19, 2006

If you think of Google (GOOG) and Yahoo! (YHOO) as bellwethers for online advertising, you have to be scratching your head today. Or maybe not. I think Yahoo! may be the canary in the coal mine.
Google

Ad Slowdown, What Slowdown? – GigaOm
Google revenues surge on ad strength – Financial Times
Google’s 3Q Profit Nearly Doubles [...]

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For Mark Cuban, history repeats itself

October 9, 2006

The first thing that I thought today was how strange it was that Mark Cuban had been calling Google “moronic” for thinking of buying YouTube. I don’t imagine that he was telling Tim Koogle that he was “crazy,” for buying his company, Broadcast.com, a company that Yahoo! would spend the next several years dismantling. [...]

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Bringing users back in droves part 2 – Earning points

September 21, 2006

Ahhhhh… earning points. This is an old chestnut. Earning points in games doesn’t really need much explaining. Shoot Space Invader, get points. Points are all about keeping score (duh) and then comparing your score with your friends.

There are at least two types of points used in community websites, social points and [...]

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Is Yahoo Answers being gamed?

August 23, 2006

The WSJ is reporting this morning that people are asking and answering inane questions on the Yahoo! Answers service to boost their point scores.
Here is the WSJ’s explanation of the system:

“A points economy is like a regular economy, except the currency is points, not currency. Even though you can’t exchange these points for real-world goods [...]

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Jessica Simpson track is NOT DRM free

July 23, 2006

While the blogging world is falling all over itself in praise of Yahoo!’s release of the so-called “DRM-free” Jessica Simpson track (I won’t even comment on the fact that the track is from Jessica Simpson, oy), I think that the music industry is indicating how desperate they are to break from the iTunes hegemony that [...]

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Monday Links

July 17, 2006

Movielink to allow movies transferred to DVD Didn’t they already do that? Maybe it was the other guys.
Build your own iPod HiFiTwo in wall speakers, $200. Two dead Mac Classics, $25. Retro iPod HiFi, priceless.
Yahoo! to the 9’sDaily video feature of the top 9 videos from the web. No podcast, [...]

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Yahoo! acquires Meedio

April 18, 2006

Ten foot interfaces. Microsoft has one and recently, so does Apple. And now, Yahoo! bought their very own. Meedio, one of the many television front ends for Windows XP, was acquired today by Yahoo! Strangely, tho, it appears that only the company was purchased but not all of their products, [...]

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Yahoo! Music makes Linksys plugin

January 26, 2006

For those of you using the Yahoo! Music Engine, you’ve just gotten a little bit of freedom. Similar to Apple’s Airport Express, the Linksys Wireless G Music Bridge plays music in remote locations (read: away from your computer) and Yahoo! has just wrote a plugin that will work with the device.
Not sure if this [...]

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