a brief rant about Yahoo!
¶ by Rob FrieselI caught the news about Yahoo! via the DF post earlier today. And all I could think was: Well shit, that’s really shitty.
I’ve felt for some time like Yahoo! is a weird beast. Before Google, Yahoo! was here I went when I wanted to search. But the company hung on as an iconic web company. And good for them. But for me, they slipped largely into–with apologies to Chuck Palahniuk–irrelevance isn’t the right word, but it’s the first word that comes to mind. Meanwhile, I got myself suckered into Del.icio.us and Flickr in a big way. Both of those eventually got scooped up by Yahoo!–which at the time seemed like great news for everyone. That seems to be the eco system for web start-ups–innovate like crazy and then get scooped up by someone larger who can help you take it to the next level with more funding and/or access to more/better talent.
And as far as I can tell, Yahoo! has some great talent–lots of developers whom I admire are either currently at Yahoo! or have it somewhere prominent on their resume.
So what’s happening? Why are they dropping 4% of their staff? Why are they shutting down Del.icio.us? Why is Thomas Hawk writing letters like this about Flickr?
It’s weird. And maybe a little troubling. Hopefully they can pull it together. My own snarky and selfish post-script being: “at least for Flickr’s sake, since it’s apparently too late for Del.icio.us.”
Leave a Reply