Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

What Went Wrong At Yahoo

Posted by Soulskill on from the doing-it-early-vs-doing-it-well dept.

kjh1 writes "Paul Graham writes about what he felt went wrong at Yahoo. He has first-hand experience — his company, Viaweb, was bought by Yahoo and he worked there for a while. In a nutshell, he felt that Yahoo was too conflicted about whether they were a technology company or a media company. 'If anyone at Yahoo considered the idea that they should be a technology company, the next thought would have been that Microsoft would crush them.' This in part led to hiring bad programmers, or at least not going single-mindedly after the very best ones. They also lacked the 'hacker' culture that Google and Facebook still seem to have, and that is found in many startup tech companies. 'As long as customers were writing big checks for banner ads, it was hard to take search seriously. Google didn't have that to distract them.'"

8 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. Way to compete with MS by oodaloop · · Score: 1, Funny

    'If anyone at Yahoo considered the idea that they should be a technology company, the next thought would have been that Microsoft would crush them.' This in part led to hiring bad programmers

    Did anyone else read this as, they hired lousy programmers so they could compete with Microsoft?

    --
    Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
    1. Re:Way to compete with MS by Culture20 · · Score: 3, Funny

      'If anyone at Yahoo considered the idea that they should be a technology company, the next thought would have been that Microsoft would crush them.' This in part led to hiring bad programmers

      Did anyone else read this as, they hired lousy programmers so they could compete with Microsoft?

      I read it as: Yahoo bought a Mary-Kay Pink colored car so that Microsoft wouldn't steal it if they had to park on the street.

    2. Re:Way to compete with MS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      As a lousy programmer and ex-Yahoo employee, I can confirm this.

  2. Re:Facebook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Are you calling my l337 sheep-clicking skillz into question?

  3. Re:Switch to Google by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 2, Funny

    I used HotBot.

    Then again, I used HotDog Stand as a windows colour scheme. I now only see in greyscale.

    --
    Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
  4. Re:From what I gather... by n1ywb · · Score: 3, Funny

    I don't know, but having used Yahoo Store, I think one of their mistakes was buying it from Viaweb.

    --
    -73, de n1ywb
    www.n1ywb.com
  5. Re:What went wrong? by BabyDuckHat · · Score: 4, Funny

    Thanks for the insights. I've never seen anyone so committed to using the "!" in the Yahoo name and I gotta say, it's really, really irritating.

  6. Re:What's wrong by treeves · · Score: 3, Funny

    Are you trying to say that the reason Yahoo hasn't been more successful is that their employees, led astray by the bad educational system, are lousy at math and this affects Yahoo's performance?
    Or are you just replying to the wrong story?

    --
    ...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.