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Only 25% of Yahoo Staff "Eat Their Own Dog Food"

nk497 writes "Only 25% of Yahoo staff have obeyed the company's request to 'eat their own dog food' and switch to Yahoo Mail, a colorful internal memo has revealed. The leaked email, acquired by All Things Digital, implores staff to move over to the corporate version of Yahoo's webmail system, gently lambasting staff who refuse to part with Microsoft Outlook. The message goes on to take a swipe at what appears to be Yahoo employees' preferred mail client, Microsoft Outlook, describing it as 'anachronism of the now defunct 90s PC era, a pre-web program written at a time when NT Server terrorized the data center landscape with the confidence of a T-Rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents who fully bought into the illusion of their son's utter uniqueness because the big-mouthed, tiny-armed monster infant could mimic the gestures of The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl.'"

16 of 292 comments (clear)

  1. Wagging the dog. by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Another reasonable approach from might be to task, "How does our service need to change, in order for our own employees to want to use it?"

    1. Re:Wagging the dog. by Darinbob · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why should the employees want to use it? "Eat your own dogfood" is a bad idea for your employees, unless you are creating a product intended for those types of employees. Is Yahoo Mail intended to be a corporate mail solution? If so then the employees should be encouraged to use it. If instead it is intended to be a general purpose web mail service, then it may be inappropriate for work.

      Similarly, if my company made catheters I most certainly would object to be asked to use one while at work! Similarly, if I was creating a product intended for people with average to low technical aptitude (twitter, facebook) I would strongly object to be required to actually use that product all the time (I'd use it for testing purposes only). If I was at Google I would strenuously object to doing all my documentation by using Google Docs, or read mail via Google Mail, even if I was working on those products to make them better.

      People are not cookie cutter clones!

    2. Re:Wagging the dog. by Enry · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Google is intending to have their products used by companies that pay for the services. If Google Docs isn't good enough for internal Google employees to use, how can they expect paying customers to be happy with the same kind of service? I can see a section of users with multiple e-mail clients to keep an eye on the competition, but I don't think it would make 75% of employees.

      What Yahoo(!) should really be asking is: what is it about Outlook that keeps people using it?

    3. Re:Wagging the dog. by Eskarel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well based on the memo it might be a good start to recognise that people don't really want to use web based tools for core tasks, particularly event based ones like e-mail. Webmail if fine and dandy for "check it once a day" type of e-mail communication, but corporate e-mail simply isn't that.

    4. Re:Wagging the dog. by rtb61 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      As always force of habit is the major driver to keep using existing products. Especially considering M$ Outlook was better known as M$ Lookout for routine failures and data loss in the nineties, it is rather more reliable now. Getting accustomed to all the features of a calendering and scheduling program takes a reasonable effort, especially if you really want to make full use of it, unless there is a major reason to change, why would you.

      The other perspective is, force your employees to use you deficient product and they will work at reducing those deficiencies and make a better product available to your customers.

      Calendering and scheduling is in transition as it is disappearing as a PC or notebook program and shifting to being a smartphone only program, for obvious reasons. There is still server side functions but the big US server side companies have a real permanent taint of the NSA/CIA hanging over them now and as such, local files are going to become much more popular again.

      Even US security software is going to come under some serious review, after all fifty thousand hacked networks and not one squeak from any, and I repeat not any, US in-security software and we can all guess exactly why. US servers, US software are all going to become don't touch.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    5. Re:Wagging the dog. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Take outlook away, and see if anyone praises it. The killer app is not outlook, it is outlook + calendar integration, which is superior to all.

    6. Re:Wagging the dog. by red+crab · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Really? I thought Yahoo! has always been in news, even before Mayers took over it, always for the wrong reasons; this piece of news being no exception.

  2. Web Apps by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Aren't the best solution to everything.

  3. Microsoft Outlook is like capitalism by Qzukk · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The worst possible email client, except for all the rest.

    --
    If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
  4. Re:web mail for enterprise? by Ralph+Wiggam · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Gmail has been pretty successful.

  5. News for who? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Microsoft Outlook, describing it as 'anachronism of the now defunct 90s PC era, a pre-web program written at a time when NT Server terrorized the data center landscape with the confidence of a T-Rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents who fully bought into the illusion of their son's utter uniqueness because the big-mouthed, tiny-armed monster infant could mimic the gestures of The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl."

    Individually the words make sense, but put them together and you can clearly see why Yahoo is where it is.

  6. Re:People use outlook? by Darinbob · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Most companies essentially mandate the use of Outlook and have MS Exchange as their back end.

    As bad as Outlook is, it's still better than any webmail solution.

  7. Knowing what I know about corporate life... by sootman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... why do I suspect it'll be the managers who are the last to be dragged, kicking and screaming, from Outlook?

    I use Yahoo mail and Outlook. Outlook definitely has its place, especially in a business. Tell me though, because I haven't looked: can Yahoo's calendar let you see everyone else's free time when inviting people to a meeting? As easily as Outlook does?

    --
    Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
  8. Re: Be Taken Seriously by Scowler · · Score: 2, Insightful

    As if there is any difference whatsoever between '@yahoo.com' vs '@gmail.com'. Anyone who claims such is too superficial to take seriously.

  9. Re:People use outlook? by hairyfish · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'll go one further and say Exchange/Outlook is better than anything other app in it's class. I always hear people bashing Exchange/Outlook in here, but I never hear anyone say product x does it better. For Enterprise Email/Contacts/Tasks/Calendar/Collaboration the closest product is Lotus Notes and that truly sucks arse. So before you label me a shill, I'd like to hear about your replacement candidate. I have no connection to MS, I've just been down that path of finding competition and found nothing but donkeys (in this space).

  10. Re:People use outlook? by King_TJ · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yeah, this is unfortunately quite true.

    Our company would LOVE to migrate everyone away from Outlook and Exchange for multiple reasons. First and foremost, it encourages the use of the email system as an all purpose filing system, yet turns around and imposes severe limits on the number of objects it can handle before performance degrades and functions simply quit working properly. (I believe the speed and memory capacity of the client have some bearing on what the limit is for a particular user, but I've often heard recommendations to keep it under 1,000 or so objects per folder. That may sound like a lot until you realize people often have more than that in their Outlook calendar alone, if they've worked for the company for 4 or 5 years and never thought to try to delete any scheduled appointments or entries that happened in the past. Not only that, but recurring entries, such as "schedule my staff meeting every Wednesday at 1PM through the end of 2015" create separate entries for EACH occurrence!)

    Regardless, there's really not much of anything out there that's provably better. Zimbra looks interesting as a possible web-based alternative? But mostly, people really like all of this data stored (or at least cached) locally on the computer running the client, for fast access and ability to work with everything even when offline. Combine that with the functionality Outlook/Exchange provides -- and it's a tall order to match or beat it with another product.