Slashdot Mirror
What If Yahoo Was Acquired?
Johnathan Swift writes "As one of the biggest of the big on the Internet,
Yahoo! is hardly
a favorite of those Slashdot folks who like their
net small and personal.
Yet among its competition as a mega-portal -- AOL and MSN --
Yahoo! is different, and not just because it relies on
free software like FreeBSD and Linux.
This article in the
San Jose Mercury News
claims that, unlike the others, it still serves as a portal to
the greater Internet rather than the "walled gardens" of AOL or MSN
that try to isolate people from the rest of the net.
If Yahoo! should merge with or be acquired by a media company like
Disney or Viacom, it, too, would become such a walled garden, and
the Internet would be that much closer to control by a few large
corporations."
Man..if I wasn't setting myself up for a flame. SlashDot is just as much a Closed Community as AOL and MSN, under the guise of Openess. Don't get me wrong, SlashDot is great, but at the same time, it is a walled community, as is the Open Source Community. Almost like an oxymoron..huh?
I'll grant that they are better about providing open access to content than AOHell or Disney (and we see how well that's working for Disney, don't we?) or any of the others, but do you think it'd really make that much of a difference if Yahoo got bought out?
Oh yeah...like, uh, I'm guessing, ninth post. Or something.
"Settle down, Beavis. We've got an experiment to do."
Most students THINK yahoo/aol IS THE NET.
Pitiful. Education, folks.
whois aoltimewarneryahoo.com
cpeterso
I'm on three egroups lists, and it didn't seem to cause any significant problems. I just made one small update to my filters to strip out the ads since they changed the text slightly.
What was the big deal?
That's a pretty nonsensical proposition. The only thing to be gained by buying Yahoo and then making it a walled garden would be the name. And after about 7 minutes, even newbies would realize that if Yahoo doesn't have its index anymore, it's totally pointless. So the only reason AOL or whoever would do that would be to kill the competition, which is stupid, since there are cheaper ways of making money.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
If it becomes a "portal", like AltaVista, msn.com, or any of the other "front page" sites, people will stop visiting it, and it will cease to be valuable to those who visit it.
That's not to say YHOO won't be bought out. Merely to say that if YHOO is bought out by some generic media conglomerate, the conglomerate has two choices:
- Leave it as-is, and own its revenue stream, or
- Turn it into a "walled garden", and receive a negative return on their investment as it's abandoned.
Portals are dead. A YHOO buyer who doesn't realize this will just be wasting his shareholders' money.Yet among its competition as a mega-portal -- AOL and MSN -- Yahoo! is different, and not just because it relies on free software like FreeBSD and Linux.
AOL runs on aolserver, also free and open source.
.. and reley on word of mouth to creep out to new habitually surfed sites. (According to research of our very overpriced PR firm our company used). These basic 10-20 sites are not really breached.
I personally used Google to find any various obscure howto or tidbit of info that I need. If I am really looking for a good index search engine I go to DMOZ. (http://www.dmoz.org). It's basically an 'open indexed web engine'. All the editors are non-payed contributors.
The post is unrealistic.. even if Yahoo is bought out.. which I hope it is and makes the idea of services beeing free and subsadized with my 'profile' and banner revenue.
Anyway, other indexes will creep up if Yahoo goes away.
--------------------
Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
Such services are great. They are convenient, help us find info faster, and provide services. But if they ever grow too limited or hostile to certain segments of the internet, we are not bound by them. They have no legal claim on the internet. A new service would form, without the limitations. I don't tend to worry about any such company - they can only ever be one component of the internet, and not THE internet. There is no possibility of full control - too many countries, too many people, and too much individuality. Also, the law, while often as much a hinderance as a help, can in some cases prove to be a useful weapon against corporate tatics. Microsoft is being hurt more by the ongoing court case than it ever would be by a breakup of OS and applications. So don't worry, just retain the independant instinct and avoid what you dislike. That's the beauty of internet. There is no one door, and even if AOL trys to become the eight hundred pound monster the way Microsoft has in OS there will always be alternatives. Seek them out and encourage them. Competition is the ultimate weapon and security.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
If Yahoo moves from indexing everything, to only things fitting the 'closed wall' approach, that's a pretty big change to their buisness model. What will happen will depend upon what the demand for each approach is.
:)
If there is a demand for one more closed wall approach, they'll thrive. If there's not, the fighting will become more intense for the eyeballs that make up that market. More than likely, one of them would change their approach back to the index-everything one.
Either way, if there truely is a market for an index-everything site, someone else will come up and take yahoo's shoes. Either way, I'm not worried.
Gotta love free markets.
-Bill
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
Hey, I remember the days when Yahoo was http://akebono.stanford.edu/yahoo, or something close to that. They may be big and corporate and evil now, but you have to give them some credit... they worked their way up.
MSK
More, I'm curious how some of the conclusions/alarmist stuff in the linked to article were drawn. For instance:
I don't see the connection. Sure, someone could buy Yahoo with the aim of turning off its indexing and searching features, but what would be the use in that? Yahoo's principle selling point is that of a Portal - of a point to start at on the Internet, and any attempt to corrupt that purpose is going to drive users away.Mercury Center's argument is much undermined by its own selection of apparent rivals, to whit:
This is very true. Now look at it, a one stop shop (ISP subscription, TCP/IP stack (albeit over a proprietry packet switching protocol), portal and search engine) for Internet access. In other words, why would Yahoo become a 1980's era AOL or CompuServe if AOL has had to become a combination of an ISP and Yahoo-like portal?Not that I want Yahoo to be bought - it works fine independently and seems somewhat more trustworthy that way. But the linked article is not a good argument against it. Any company that intends to buy Yahoo in order to control what users can and cannot see will have limited success, and will probably die trying.
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
RedHat were to be bought by Microsoft?
Slashdot was to be bought by AOLTimeWarner
There are LOTS of possibilities and what ifs.That's why it's called a Free market! This whole thread seems to be one long bit of FUD, IMHO.
It's ok, the internet has survived thus far. Even freeNapster is still alive. And the world appears to be in one piece still, even after the election of W. Sweet dreams, everyone.
"Fifty million Americans can't be wrong," said Rep. Billy Tauzin. Gore - 50,999,897 Bush - 50,456,002
The difference here is that among the giants, the small personal internet will always be accessible. Unlike television stations, a website costs very little to run. Even if yahoo were swallowed up by a larger company and turned into a "walled garden", the internet at large wouldn't skip a beat. Sure, it might prevent new users, who aren't familiar with the internet, from seeing the diversity available, but the underground will remain the underground.
And as sites grow popular, it isn't always necessary that they collapse under their own weight, popular sites like blogger have turned to their audience/users for money to buy new servers and the users turned out in droves to pay for a service that they use and enjoy. The power of the internet is that it's a community and the imminent purchase of a large anchor site won't do much to affect the internet that we know and love.
And, not always is it in the best interest of a large corporate entity to subsume their internet properties. The failure of go.com is a powerful example of how corporatization of popular sites can destroy a user-base. And as this happens more and more, you can expect that companies will be more willing to let their affiliate sites be diverse.
Bottom Line: As long as people are passionate about the internet, there will always be independent content. An undercurrent to the mainstream.
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
i never used yahoo as a search engine, i don't like it... I have used lycos 5 years back, then alltheweb.com, then google since it exists.
Yahoo took all the webring.org stuff and made shit with it, now it's the turn of egroups... after onelist.com going to egroups.com, now i go to yahoogroups.com... WTF? I want to use a diversity of sites!!!
--
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
I like Yahoo!. Not because it's a big company. Not because it's "got everything I'd ever need!" Not because it's the best for searching (I use Google for that).
Yahoo! shows that two kids out of Stanford really can make a difference with their Graduate theses. That's why I like Yahoo!
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
How about looking at it this way.
A good percentage of the people have a 'home page' from one of the portals. Mostly AOL, MSN, or Yahoo. Almost everyone uses at least one for some net services (travel, email, news, etc.) And each has about the same market share of web users.
Now why is this. It's because each tries to capture a different market segment. MSN goes for those who don't know how to change their homepage. AOL goes for my mom (lay off the mom jokes please).
Yahoo generally targets the more sophisticated user (no not l33t d00ds with shell accounts). The average user who is interested in content over flash. Yahoo also has a bit more cachet with the 'techno-snob' that says 'I'd never use AOL/Microsuck)
In other words if yahoo (as a 'vibe') became more like the MSN/AOL closed portals it would lose the attribute that makes it most successful. Yahoo as a unit of (AOL, MS, GE, NTT, ABC, 123) would not be a cool as yahoo standalone.
Now just because it's not a good idea doesn't mean it won't happen.
But it is hard to argue against Yahoo! being an attractive acquisition target for any company trying to compete with AOL/TW and MSN. Let's see - of the traditional broadcast networks, NBC is partnered with MS already, ABC is owned by Disney, and CBS is owned by Viacom. This week, Disney is folding GO. CBS has done the most decentralized job, it seems to me. Is Fox even on the radar?
My point is that if you look at MSN and AOL/TW, someone's going to want to compete with them, and Yahoo! is the prime option to bring into the fold.
It may not be an automatic conclusion that a bought-out Yahoo! would become a preferential gatekeeper for those who own it. Though I admit that it is likely, if not probable.
But isn't this just life in the foodchain? Won't another service come along that provides an open view if Yahoo!'s become's closed? And won't they eventually become large enough to get bought when whichever megacorp that buys Yahoo! runs it into the ground and ditches it, like Disney is doing to GO?
http://drteknikal.blogspot.com/
I think that the author may have missed the point. The "walled garden" may not have any direct hyperlinks out of the garden, but all it takes is one "Google" in order to break out.
Far more dangerous and (in my opinion) more likely, is the idea that your ISP is part of a conglomerate which allows much faster interconnections with those in the garden than without. How many people give up surfing slow sites? As long as the conglomerate is large enough to encapsulate a large selection of services, they're not going to endanger themselves too much. Besides, most high speed ISP's are monopolies or duopolies.
I believe that a number of ISP's have already considered approaching vendors to pay for "preferred" status (i.e. better connectivity to their site).
Now *that* is the real way to slowly kill the internet.
As long as we have P2P the we don't need to worry that the internet can be controlled by "a few large corporations." I don't think the "masses" choose AOL because they want to, they do because they are not literate. Perhaps we need an education campaign to get people to venture outside these "walled gardens". Alghough, whether we have one or not won't matter in the end because all people venture out of the garden sooner or later.
Domain Name: AOLTIMEWARNERYAHOO.COM
Registrant:
America Online, Inc.
22000 AOL Way
Dulles, VA 20166
US
Administrative Contact:
Domain Administration, AOL
America Online, Inc.
22000 AOL Way
Dulles, VA 20166
US
Email. domains@aol.net
Tel. 703 265 4670
Technical Contact:
Domain Administration, AOL
America Online, Inc.
22000 AOL Way
Dulles, VA 20166
US
Email. domains@aol.net
Tel. 703 265 4670
Domain servers:
dns-01.ns.aol.com
152.163.159.232
dns-02.ns.aol.com
205.188.157.232
cpeterso
However, over the past few years, their presence on the 'net has been to suck up as many companies as they can, and somehow try to meld them into the Yahoo! universe ... often badly. The Webring fiasco was probably the worst case and even today I continue to fight with the Yahoo! support team, telling them they really need to put back functionality that was originally on Webring.org. "Fight" probably isn't the correct word, since they haven't bothered to respond to any support Email from me since sometime in November. Near as I can tell, they simply don't care ... either that or they're too embarassed at having bought Webring.org, broken it, and now refuse to fix it, or even acknowledge there are problems.
Yeah, maybe Yahoo! was great once, and maybe it shouldn't take one (really) bad experience to tarnish such a reputation ... but at the point where they start ignoring support Emails, I can only see a downward spiral. :-(
You mean Yahoo! is more than amagazine?
Ha! I kill me!
From the point of view of a serious Internet user, portals are certainly a bad idea. But I don't see where they are dead. There have been some nasty failures, such as go.com and Altavista. But these have more to do with a limited marketplace (the official story) and bad management (probably the big factor) than with the viability of the Portal as a business model.
I'm suprised to hear you refer to the Yahoo portalization as something that hasn't happened yet. Portals are about keeping people on the portal, and Yahoo has pursued this goal as strongly as anybody. They bought up, licensed, or developed all kinds of web apps.
This would actually be a good thing. Nobody forces you to stay on a portal site. The problem that Yahoo can't make the pieces fit. In theory, I should be able to use my Yahoo ID to read custom content, send email, maintain an address book, calendar, and other PIM stuff (all synchronized with my PDA), browse the Yellow Pages (and save the results to my address book), find backgammon opponents, play the game itself, etc., etc.
In practice, none of this really works, because the pieces are crudely implemented, poorly supported and documented, and clumsily integrated with each other. And to top it all of, Yahoo imposes the weirdest security practices on its users. For example, I used to get a Medieval History newsletter in my Yahoo mailbox. Because the newsletter used rich text (and thus consisted of a single MIME/HTML attachment), Yahoo changed every instance of "Medieval" to "Medireview" -- just in case the file was a VBS worm in disguise!
In any case, the lost of the Yahoo search engine would be no big deal. I've never seen the point in manual Internet indexes -- they can never keep up. I much prefer spider-based indexes, like Google. And if that's not enough, Google now neatly integrates the DMOZ index, which is really a better Yahoo than Yahoo.
But Yahoo continues to prosper. Why? Because they were there first, and claimed a permanent place in the Web world.
__________________
or these?
O M
http://whois.userland.com/default$aol.com
AOL.COM.STOCKHOLDERS.GET.ORALSEXONDEMAND.COM
AOL.COM.KCAUTOWEB.COM
AOL.COM.IS.REGULARLY.HAX0RED.BY.INSIDE-AOL.COM
AOL.COM.HACKED.BY.PSYKOJOKO.ON.A.ROOT-NETWORK.C
AOL.COM.EATMYSHIT.ORG
AOL.COM.AMSLIQUIDATORS.COM
AOL.COM
cpeterso
warning, this is a recycled post:
prediction: by 2002, aol/twx/viacom/cbs will merge with citi/travelers, consolidating access/content/financial services into an uber bohemoth to "serve you better". In 2003, it'll merge with merke/ciba-giegy, adding medication to mass hypnosis, creating unprecedented pocket picking opportunities.. for few.. for short run.
In the long haul, shareholder managed mediocracies like these will implode. Their urge to command and control the market will win fewer and fewer hearts. More cooperative competitors will route around the sword of the central censor. Wake up and smell the tsunami.
Metcalfe's Law describes exponentially increasing returns as more nodes connect to a network. Hence, AOL MSN etc clobber one another to acquire customers, to aggregate eyeballs, with one simple aim: sell them. Customers defect, exploiting titanic price wars. The price for customer acquisition skyrockets. Investors hoping to cash in on tomorrow's loyal customer might just have their bubble popped.
Long term loyalty can't be bought. And King Customer grows more powerful by the day. This will profoundly change all business relationships in the free trade of free ideas.
Does a customer's capacity to store information quadruple every three years? Gilder's Law says there will be 27 times more pipe to share information every three years. So in ten years, TiVo nodes might store 75 times more info, but have 60,000 times the capacity to exchange it, and do so transnationally. Try to regulate it. Go ahead, hire more lawyers.
Decentralization is bad news for vertically integrated cash registers. It's good news for reintermediators, and creators who avoid selling ownership out to ubercorps. Great news for chaorganizing traders.
Shared ownership in client/server transaction is where it's at. ImagineRadio kinda got it, until they sold out to Viacom. Aolosaurus doesn't get it at all.
What is Yahoo! anyhow? If we throw away the questionable multi-million dollar (billion?) market cap, all the fancy media sources like reuters news (of questionable value, anyhow), you're left with some very expensive scripts, some high volume servers, the mother of all internet connections.. and a list of links to other people's sites.
Corporate control of the internet? Don't make me laugh. You could hack together something to emulate Yahoo and have moderated links, much like NewHoo! is now (ironically, it was bought. Need a GPL!. But, please, don't make me laugh. You could rebuild a much better open directory just as quick. The only people that would be affected by Yahoo! being acquired are the masses of people that are pretty content with AOL anyhow, and if strained, pre-chewed media content is what you want, then they got a lock on that.
Yahoo! in 1994? 1995? was a much different place than it is now, and it was a lot more true to it's roots in the grassroots internet movement. To say that this could be coopted by coroporations misses the point; The grassroots will just move. To a large degree, it already has - and for the most part, I stopped using Yahoo a long time ago, and I got new haunts on the 'net - this being one of them.
Just some observations.
..don't panic
Staking all your hopes on Google is short-sighted.
Anyone who's ever run a NOC understands the concept of redundancy. When your proxy server goes down, do you say, "Oh, well, we still have the backup," and throw it in the trash? Most likely, if you're competent, you'll find that redundancy is a condition you want to preserve.
Similarly, if the Chinese invaded and conquered California, would we shrug and say, "Oh well. Doesn't really matter - there's still New York."
It is, in fact, a Good Thing that there is more than one large, easily accessible portal to the internet that doesn't try to constrict the internet to what it wants it to be. And the more of them fall, the more the trend will point to the internet becoming a "walled garden".
Redundancy is a good thing. Redundancy is a good thing.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
Egroups is one of the bigest public mailing list providers out there...many communities depend on these mailing lists for their members. A number of them are Pagan oriented, and now that the US is once again playing in the "Bush Leagues", a major media company might not want the controversy of supporting Paganism on their sites.
That is what scares me.
ttyl
Farrell
Druid, Erisian and sometime Thelemite
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
One great feature of Yahoo is that it is sensibly simple in that it uses text when it is appropriate, and not some whizbang graphics that essentially communicate the same info as text would. Thus, Yahoo is useful and visitable by anyone from Lynx users to cell phone users to the latest greatest browsers. Google also has a nice "low graphics" appearance but most of the "walled garden" type portals tend to be bloated with superfluous graphics and it would be sad to see those dominate more than they already do. I don't understand why "big-time" web sites feel the need to make over their graphics every couple of months and needlessly complicate the presentation of information, sigh.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
Heck with it, why don't we just start our own Internet company. With the sheer brain power, engineering genius and geekiness of the average Slashdot reader behind the company, we'd be unstoppable. If I were a partner in the company I'd be much more willing to offer up more than just the $5.00 I mentioned above, in fact, I've got about 110 acres of land I'd be willing to donate to the project. 110 acres of pure, opensource geeky goodness. Wow, it'd be a geek paradise.
Of course, if we were to fill 110 acres of property up with geeks, the neighbors (and the garbage collectors) might have a problem with the staggering volume of Mountain Dew cans that we generate. It'd be a mountain of Mountain Dew cans...then again, maybe we could use this to our advantage, and we could open up a year round snowboard park to help pay those ungodly electricity bills.
Oddly enough, I'm only half joking.
--It's Pimptastic!--
"...and the Internet would be that much closer to control by a few large corporations."
You know, I really dislike it when people use the words "internet" and "web" interchangably. I somehow doubt the whole 'net, being that big pile of computers around the world, will be affected by Yahoo merging with somebody else and changing its links. The web, however, could be changed as people's web pages are walled out. Maybe I am just strange at thinking they are very different (seeing as how one is a subset of the other), but calling them the same thing makes me think of people who think that Netscape == The Internet. Rather foolish if you ask me...
Posted from the wireless couch.
This 'what if' crap doesn't matter to ME!
Nuff said.
Huh? Very doubtful. I don't know about anyone else, but Yahoo is my portal of choice. For a brief time I switched to Google, but since Yahoo started using Google's engine I've gone back to Yahoo.
Yahoo combines the right amount of internet knowhow, big-name features (like their calender, which I use daily) and a strong search engine.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
First, Yahoo has never accepted money for placing a site higher in a search, and probably never will. I should know. I was an intern at a startup site that wanted to try to do this and Yahoo said it was "unethical".
Second, how is Google "competition", if Yahoo licenses their engine? If anything, Google is more like a "partner", or have you not gone to Yahoo recently to do your research.
In short, kindly get your head out of your ass.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
But this is still available.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
They certainly have the right to charge for their services, but don't put them on a pedestal above the other big directories.
I doubt you'll be able to find many 'small time' sites (like mine) listed in Yahoo from this point forward.
Since when the search engine was powered by Google.
1. Because yahoo embraced and still embraces the web as it is meant to be.....accessible by anyone with a computer/devices and a connection. (even supporting text based lynx browsers ;)..)
..no need to...We all know their story.
..and may not offer the best incarnations of those services. But, what it has is the established centralization in which the others do not and never will. For better or for worse, I won't be surprised if they get really big in the media distribution market via broadcast.com streaming movies, music videos, maybe buying out a site like launch.com......or a portable "personal" mp3 streaming service such as myplay.com..only time will tell.
...but they're good and still stayed true to their fundamentals while expanding. And with rapid advancement of the web via flash, media distribution etc..It's kind of a relief to see the familiarity of their simplistic interface ....after all these years.
2. Because yahoo expanded on its services while maintaining the familiarity of its simplistic interface.
3. Because yahoo established its name and presence on the web at the right time, using the right fundamentals/ideas, while gaining the right investors.
I could easily dull u with a lonnng analysis on how they invested, implemented, and expanded their services
I've grown older with yahoo over the years...while sometimes i loved and hated it. I've been using it on a daily basis for years...and It ultimately served my needs very well.. in which search, communication and portable services are crucial since i access the web in different locations and on different operating systems/platforms frequently. From personal stock quotes... to bookmarks, to maintaining a buddy list that i can access anywhere through instant messaging using java.
Granted that they completely ripped off or bought out some ideas from other services
I won't praise them as the greatest major "dotcom" ever
--By the way yahoo has around $1.62 billion USD in cash reserves, has no major debts, still making profit, while maintaining and expanding a huge market capitalization.....
Yahoo is going to be around for a long time folk...
No, they don't let you pay for a higher listing. Now, they just make you pay for any listing. Then, they tell you that they may or may not end up putting your link in the database, they will use whatever title they want, whatever category they want, and whatever description they want. I'm glad they made me pay for that.
My company is listed on Yahoo! under the wrong company name, a bad description, and in the wrong category. Did I submit it that way? No. That's just what Yahoo! thought was best for us, and they made us pay for it.
It should not scare you.
It should strengthen your resolve.
If the fascists force you underground, then you're really better off anyway.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I take it we're all agreed that NL is not a portal?
Hey, where is Jim's Pancreatic Cancer Page? Sounds interesing!
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