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Yahoo! Opens Its Website To Third-Party Developers

Posted by Soulskill on from the catching-bigger-fish dept.

Matt Asay writes "Yahoo! has taken a step beyond Google by opening up its website and other services to third-party developers, the Wall Street Journal is reporting. 'The efforts ... range from allowing users to search other content — such as classified-ad sites — from within Yahoo Mail to allowing them to access online music download services like that of Amazon.com Inc. from within Yahoo Music ... [as well as] redesigning [Yahoo!'s] home page to make it easier for users to tap these third-party services.' It's a good move toward an open-source web, but still leaves Yahoo! and other cloud-based applications vulnerable to obsolescence, a problem recently examined by ReadWriteWeb, which discussed a few good applications that have disappeared from the web. It's good to see Yahoo! becoming more permeable to outside development, but it would also be nice to see its applications outlive the company's attention span or life span." Yahoo! ran Open Hack 2008 over Friday and Saturday. Coverage will be available soon at their developers page.

28 comments

  1. Yawho? by symbolset · · Score: 1, Informative

    Didn't they used to have a website or something?

    They're not interesting any more. I had some domains with them, but they raised their registrar rate to $35/yr for what costs them very little. They'll probably mention it to somebody one day, but I had to find out on a blog.

    Jack my rates more than triple and not even tell me? See ya!

    --
    Help stamp out iliturcy.
    1. Re:Yawho? by cmacb · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They're not interesting any more. I had some domains with them, but they raised their registrar rate to $35/yr for what costs them very little. They'll probably mention it to somebody one day, but I had to find out on a blog.

      I had a similar experience. They outsourced almost all the things like this they did. I signed up thinking "I'm going to get top-notch service and support from Yahoo for my domain!" only to find out I was dealing with one California warehouse based ISP after another. Yes the changed vendors from time to time with little notice and when features you used stopped working you just had to deal with it. Now of course you can get a similar service for free from Google. Why would anyone want to still be using Yahoo?

      Oh I was a glutton for punishment from Yahoo, I also got suckered into:

      (1) A Yahoo branded dial-up ISP which mysteriously vanished one day (long ago).

      (2) Yahoo domain registration and web hosting. I got both of these and soon discovered that the only involvement Yahoo had was the distinctive purple logo on the web pages used to sign up for or administer the service (why hadn't learned from my first experience?). Fortunately I was able to get Network Solutions to rescue my domain names from third party hell. Google makes it clear that you are getting your domain name from a third party, and they tell you who it is, and they make it easy to use someone else. What a concept!

      (3) An expensive RIM pager that only worked with a "special" Yahoo service, except it really didn't work at all, was discontinued after a year, leaving you with an expensive conversation piece (or in my case, several of them). I vowed never to do business with Yahoo or RIM again over this. But why did it take me three attempts to learn that as a supplier of services Yahoo was a shit-hole of a company?

      By being the market leader for so long and with the help of suckers like me, Yahoo provided an excellent launching ramp for Google, who only had to pay a bit of attention to its customers to seem like something revolutionary. My only question is: Why is Yahoo taking so long to crash and burn?

      I think Yahoo and Microsoft would make excellent partners. I hope the merger talks are re-awakened and succeed this time. then I have one less company to hate.

  2. Yahoo is a joke by nyet · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Their message board moderation is *fully* automated. It is easy to set up scripts and get posts AND accounts deleted simply by spamming their complaint page. There are no humans at the switch.

  3. A very late move from Yahoo by geniusxyz · · Score: 0

    Its too late to come in the game for Yahoo... I stopped using My Yahoo, Del.icio.us and Yahoo 360. The only two decent services they are left with are Yahoo Mail and Flickr which are already taking tough beating from Gmail and Picasa.. The only way Yahoo can win back its users is by doing something revolutionary but not by doing the same stuff which iGoogle, Netvibes, Pageflakes and Pageonce are already offering...

  4. Stretching Resources by uniquegeek · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It just occurred to me that the more companies rely on others to do their programming for them, the fewer developers we have for other projects.

    Is the growth rate of programmers close to the growth rate of available projects? Will more projects spark an interest in programming in some of the population?

    1. Re:Stretching Resources by Elektroschock · · Score: 1

      Will code be available under Affero license? Take it positive, it is a competition for the community and if you don't offer the right licensing conditions, bad luck.

  5. Searching Craigslist by Cornelius42 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Without violating Craigslist terms of service. I have created a nation wide search, and state search for Craiglist. The links are.

    http://atl.org/~ed/craigslist/
    http://atl.org/~ed/craigslist/queryState.php

    I built it for a small group of friends, and I'm sure it will collapse under the weight of a slashdot effect. But searching Craigslist can be done without violating section 12.b of the terms of service.

    1. Re:Searching Craigslist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm pretty sure your site will be just fine if you keep posting spam in your comments here.

  6. This! is! great! news! by Errtu76 · · Score: 2, Funny

    We! need! more! exclamation! marks! in! their! website!

    I'm! going! to! sign! up! now!

    1. Re:This! is! great! news! by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      Captain! Kirk! Must Date! Green! Alien! Women! In Bikinis!

      Actually, a few pics of that might triple the actual traffic to Yahoo not faked by the Yahoo toolbar bundled with things people actually do want.

    2. Re:This! is! great! news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Captain! Kirk! Must Date! Green! Alien! Women! In Bikinis!

      Actually, a few pics of that might triple the actual traffic to Yahoo not faked by the Yahoo toolbar bundled with things people actually do want.

      YaHooters?

  7. Meh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wake me when I can access Yahoo basic mail via POP or IMAP. Those sorts of services are only available on a pay to play basis.

    1. Re:Meh by apathy+maybe · · Score: 1

      I have been able to access a yahoo.com.au and a yahoo.co.uk branded email via POP for many many years. I at one stage said that I was happy to receive spam from Yahoo in exchange for this service, and have received less then about 20 pieces of such in the many years of service.

      As far as it goes, I would suggest that Yahoo mail is a great offering for me, and has been for years. Being able to access it via POP is great as well (though, every time I have set it up, I realised that I preferred to access it via the web...).

      So yeah, don't complain about not being able to access mail via POP, look around your settings page.

      --
      I wank in the shower.
  8. I want a leaner Yahoo! Mail by bogaboga · · Score: 1

    I welcome this new openness on Yahoo!'s part and hope it will allow me as a user to strip out what I regard as junk [stuff] on Yahoo! Mail's interface.

    All I want from the service is the ability to see what I want, when I want. Is this too much to ask for? I do not think so.

    Coders, point me to the tools I need to get the job done.

    1. Re:I want a leaner Yahoo! Mail by e4g4 · · Score: 1

      The tools you're looking for are readily (and freely) available at gmail.com

      --
      The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
  9. Has Yahoo remembered where it's coming from. by rtfa-troll · · Score: 1

    One of the things that I've heard about failed takeover bids is that normally the companies share price goes down immediately after and stays down for a while. However, then it often goes back up to and exceeds the value it had before the takeover. I wonder if a takeover threat isn't a thing which allows companies to reassess where they are coming from and start to seriously thing about what they should be doing. I'm optimistically hoping that Yahoo returns to it's position as an internet leader, pushing forward new services and ideas. In the days when so much commercial junk is seen as leading we could definitely do with some fresh ideas.

    --
    =~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
  10. Is this the Yahoo BOSS API again? by Animats · · Score: 1

    Is this the "Yahoo BOSS API" being relaunched, or something else?

  11. Opening up: the last failure of the desperate by jmcbain · · Score: 1

    Opening up a once successful closed system, eh? It worked out so well with Solaris, lifting Sun to the top once again! Racing to the bottom via opening up may help out the will-code-for-food 3rd party developers and stir excitement in the i'm-just-poor-enough-to-use-linux camp, but it will only lead to failure for the company desperate enough to go that direction.

  12. No, you're missing the point. by Dr.+Crash · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    No, you're missing the point.

    The point is to tell the PC games industry that
    the game is over. Give people what they want
    (that is, no hassles) and you'll get business.

    Give them hassles, and they will walk away from
    your billion-polygons-amazing-detail wrechedness,
    because it's just not worth it any more.

    We're tired of having to repair the damage things
    like game rootkits and SecuROM does to our
    systems. OUR systems, mind you. NOT _your_
    systems.

    Or do you want to drive business to VALVE and
    Nintendo?

    Vote with your wallets, folks.

     

  13. So as a developer by theverylastperson · · Score: 0

    Can I now change Yahoo back to the way it was about seven or eight years ago, back when I liked it? Then again I have better things to spend my time on than fixing Yahoo's mistake.

    Jerry, what happened? You dissed Google and now you regret it. I bet he wishes he had a backrub...

    --
    ed duval the very last person
  14. There is only 1 truly "Open Platform as a Service" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ModBox

  15. What's this, like developer jam or something? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So far, I haven't read anything in the article that tells me that Yahoo's changed in any way. This hackfest just sounds to me like a developer jam or something, where people are brought in, offered a controlled set of tools and data and asked to develop with it. It's not unlike any user conference for any large software firm out there - MS, Goog, SAP, IBM, SUN - they probably *all* have developer jams - so what's the news in this article? that Yahoo is now (finally) starting to catch up? Get with the times! This article was just trying to generate a little PR to trick some naive investors.

  16. Smoooooooothhh by unity100 · · Score: 1

    really. 3rd party developer = increased usability and reach.

    --
    Read radical news here
  17. Can't trust them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    After what they did with Yahoo! Music, I can't trust them.

    They suddenly closed the service off to Windows 2000 users even though it worked fine with Windows 2000 for a couple of years, and then ultimately shutting it down entirely, leaving users screwed), I can't trust them. They are capricious about when they provide and withdraw support.

    Developing on this platform would not be a wise move.