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The Problem With Portals
nickfarr writes: "This article about Yahoo from Sunday's NYT gives some pretty good arguments against the profitability of portals; or the idea that massive visibility translates into massive profit. It definitely presents a broad middle perspective between the .com naysayers and the irrational optimists." The financial news is full of such things, and this is better than most -- all that infrastucture is looking for some money to swallow before it starves.
It's funny. I worked at a bank that passed on the Yahoo IPO back in 199x. There was a lot of e-enthusiasm among the analysts, but it had not reached the flaming inferno of the past two years.
The primary (overlapping) criticisms of the deal at the time were:
Time seems to have confirmed these worries, and it won't be long before we hear a chorus of "I told you so" from the despised minority of doubters. Incidentally, the ability to enumerate these points did NOT save my old co from its share of internet flameouts. I guess that's why they call it a mania.
My own opinion is that the shakeout is a good thing. Most "e-tailers" are glorified catalog retailers, except that they lack basic business knowledge. Throwing people's savings at them is hardly a good thing. If other online cos that parted these fools with their money have to suffer some, that's good too. Let them shed the corporate massage parlor, or whatever other .com fat they've accumulated. Let them automate more, as computer businesses should, and return workers to the Pool of Useful People.
The worst thing is the media trying to turn this into MY problem. I can't stand it when these business issues cause people (particularly the Times) to darkly hint at the impending death of free content. Don't they think some struggling free content provider might be happy with Yahoo's "80% discounted" ad placements? Might they not benefit some from the many skilled workers returning from their mad crusades?
On a grander scale, follow the money upstream -- do they think when the tap runs dry, infrastructure and bandwidth providers will just pack up and go home? Nonsense. They'll do what the computer industry always does when faced with a glut -- increase capacity and lower costs until you find your market again. The only rational conclusion is that the removal of .com high-rollers from the marketplace is the best possible thing for the free and independent Internet.
Sorry, I should've warned about rant mode, but it took me a while to get worked up.
Kill, Tux, kill!
Just go to boo.com, the failed sports closing retailer. Millions of dollars were invested in this website, yet I get a blank page unless I turn on JavaScript. And if I turn on JavaScript, the code on the page proceeds to maximise my browser window in such a way that if I were a newbie, I wouldn't be able to access the close button for my browser. The people who made these dot.coms were for the mostpart tricksters and conmen, and they fully deserved the dot.com bust. For all our sakes, don't let them reflect on our great 'Net community.
Yahoo and other portals have tried to follow suit, doing all things for all potential users, and in the process spending lavisly to acquire niche competitors.
But Yahoo doesn't have a lock on Web users the way Microsoft does with Office for desktop users. You can't just click a link to use Word Perfect rather than Word. But you certainly can leave Yahoo to use another site.
Sites that stay focused on what they do well tend to survive. It's the UNIX mantra - small, sharp tools that get the job done. I was a religious eGroups user until they got swallowed by Yahoo. Now the interface sucks and I'll probably start looking for a replacement.
Portals by definition are not lean and mean. You might even say that they are counter to the spirit of the Web. Things are *supposed* to be distributed, and users of the Web understand this better than all the industry pundits. They also have shown again and again that brand loyalty on the Web doesn't amount to squat.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ