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The Google-fication of Yahoo!
Hugh Pickens writes "Since coming to Yahoo!, CEO Marissa Mayer has added a weekly, Friday afternoon all-hands meeting, just like at Google; she announced that henceforth the food in Yahoo's URLs Cafe will be free, just like at Google; and she has begun prepping major changes to the layout of the work spaces and buildings of Yahoo to make it feel more collaborative and cool, just like, well.. you get the idea. Such focus on improving cultural issues is an interesting initial move by the neophyte CEO, since the care and feeding and, most of all, cosseting of employees has been a critical element to Google's success at creating an always-sunny work environment. But Mayer has been up to much more serious business, said several sources, especially product innovation as the savior for Yahoo: Better email! Better search! Better ad-serving! And a special plea to make Flickr awesome again! In other words, better every product Yahoo has to offer. 'This is the sound of Yahoo becoming a technology company again,' says one source. 'It will be all about platforms and products.' Sources say that will likely mean a big splashy tech or product deal in the days ahead, perhaps via an acquisition to signal the new direction, perhaps with the acquisition of a sexy product like Flipboard. In the meantime, many at Yahoo are bracing for a pack of current and former Googlers — Mayer had a lot of loyal staffers — to come on board, writes Kara Swisher. 'And, by the looks of all the Googley changes at Yahoo, they'll feel right at home when they get there.'"
Cue "Workplace Culture Patent Violation" lawsuit in 3... 2... 1...
I hope that they succeed. It would be nice to have multiple viable search, etc solutions, rather than one good provider and awful competitors.
Personally I don't think its the best idea to try and turn Yahoo into Google, it needs to find its own strengths and play to them, and tackle new markets where there aren't many established superplayers just yet, in order to compete on a more even footing.
she announced that henceforth the food in Yahoo's URLs Cafe will be free, just like at Google;
That goes a long way to creating a happy work place right there.
15 years ago I worked in a place where it took you 10-12 minutes to get past security, walk through the building, across a large area, go up an elevator, get in your car, go through two more security checkpoints, just to get on the main street. Half your lunch break was spent in transit, and you were only allowed 45 minutes.
You were not allowed to eat at your desks, and no break room was provided. Well, it did exist, but it was more like a closet hallway with a two seat mini table. Not set up to allow dozens of people to eat lunch.
There was a 3rd option.... the cafe at the bottom of the building where the owner realized he had a captive audience and made airport food prices seem cheap in comparison.
Yeah... something like this at Yahoo would seem like paradise to me.
We have to modernize Yahoo so that when Microsoft and Google want to buy us out we can demand top price!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Googlified?
It's all been tried
With smooth visage
Can't take our pride
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
The thing that excites me most is the possibility of Flickr getting some real momentum behind it again. Even now I still prefer Flickr over other photo sharing services, and it would be great to see it get first class status among the users of the internet.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"since the care and feeding and, most of all, cosseting of employees has been a critical element to Google's success at creating an always-sunny work environment"
Actually, the first and foremost reason for Google's success has been its people. And Yahoo has been taking a beating long enough not to have the same caliber of individuals at this point...so cosseting them isn't exactly going to give the same results as Google gets for taking care of their own employees. Not that it isn't a good idea, but I think Yahoo needs to come up with more compelling reasons to work for them, instead of an up-and-comer (which they absolutely are not, unfortunately). I'm a huge fan of companies providing perks for their people; both scientific studies and my own personal experience show that you get a much bigger ROI on those than on straight salary bumps, for the most part. But they aren't going to improve your company's bottom line automatically.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Yahoo mail to avoid google mail
Yahoo (or duckduckgo) to avoid google search
Mozilla or Opera browser to avoid google browser
And so on.
I have not found a workaround for youtube, but I don't like having google gathering all this data about me & creating a profile. I want to use alternatives as much as possible.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I've said this several times before (including in feedback to Yahoo), but I'll say it here just in case anyone from Yahoo! is actually paying attention:
In Yahoo! finance, you really need to give users the option to chart dividend-adjusted price (or, equivalently, "growth of $10,000 investment"). Charting the raw stock price isn't very useful, especially for mutual funds that pay out substantial dividends or capital gains distributions at the end of the year (when the market isn't tanking). Those payouts cause the price to drop, but it's not an economically meaningful drop -- no money was lost. If you try to compare two securities, or compare a security to an index, and the price drops off a cliff every December (again, the drop means nothing), it's just not useful. Yahoo! has the adjusted price data needed to make a useful chart (it's called "Adj Close" in the "Historical Prices" table), it just doesn't give the user a way to chart it.
I propose that Yahoo gets it's finger out of it's backside and fix Flickr. For months I've been trying to get a "pro" account to upload more photograhs than the standard freebie 200. However like many other complaints in the forums, Yahoo seem to not be bothered in fixing the billing system, many can't log in to even create a billing account, others can't pay or renew what they have. Sounds a bigger problem then just re-arranging how the chairs and desks are in an office for better Feng shui.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Marissa should bring Steve Regge onboard so he can teach Yahoo people to eat their own dogfood and build a common platform around Flickr and YIM that will be API accessible for 3rd party developers to develop an ecosystem!
Not sufficient, true. But the thing a new CEO needs most of all is time, and making some trivial but highly visible and generally popular changes that can be implemented in hours will buy her the time to actually address real problems, while giving the press something to talk about besides her uterus. The lady ain't dumb.
I don't suppose they'll drop the practice of charging an annual fee for the privilege of email forwarding. Quite a nasty move, IMO.
I wouldn't be so sure of that. Google may be a big name that looks good on a resume, but their payscales (ya know, actual cash compensation, the type that pays a mortgage) are crap.
Now they serve up pages that don't even have all the words you're searching for, even if you specifically tell it to only return results with that word. Quotes are useless in a Google search any more.
I wondered if that was just me, I used to use quotes all the time to make sure I got something fairly relevant, but of late it seems not to really limit things well... I just thought perhaps the syntax for blocking exact phrases had changed, but I could not find mention of any new way to lock down sets of words.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Lots of people still use and like Yahoo mail.
Also, Yahoo has really excellent sports coverage (thanks in part to a long ago effort to spend money on first-hand coverage).
Then there is Flickr, still my favorite social photo sharing service that just needs to be overhauled a bit.
I'm sure there are other things too, it was really only search that I found Yahoo terrible at. Everything else they still do reasonably well.
Well, except for Yahoo Answers, but perhaps they could turn that into an entertainment venue...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Great idea! "And don't forget. Friday, is Hawaiian Shirt Day! So if you want, you can wear a Hawaiian shirt,. . . and jeans,. . ." Don't forget the new cover sheet on your TPS reports!
Huh??? From what I have heard, Google's pay is by far the best in the 'Valley, both cash only and total (including stock/benefits). That said, you're not going to get rich working for either them or Yahoo. You only make it big here by lucking into an employee-number-[2..20] role.
That's, err, very out-of-line with what I've heard, and I've had friends there only a few years ago -- word was that the total comp was healthy (after you considered everything they spent on you -- a great deal of which wasn't in any way cash-equivalent), but the cash comp not at all.
That said, every time I've been in their interviewing pipeline (three times now, I think?), I ended up accepting a job somewhere else before we got to the point of salary negotiation, so my impressions are distinctly secondhand (not third- or fourth-hand, mind you).