Langester

When I say Amazon you probably think books or marketplace, even though they enterprise services storage grid cloud computing.  If I say Google search and Adsense probably comes to mind, even thought they apps, mail, IM, photo manager and development tools.

But when I say Yahoo! it doesn’t conjure anything for me, for other it might mean search, ads, mail, mobile, stores, aggregation, internet access, IM.  Once the Wallstreet darling is now in …  floating in the cyber wind (e-Wind maybe)?  I remember when Yahoo! first came online it was a huge directory of websites.  Now in 1995 that may have seemed like something that was manageable with only a couple of million web pages needed to cataloged by humans.   That has since proven to be impossible and replaced with web crawler and search engines. With their directory gone the founding “product” is also gone.  What’s the rallying point for the company?  What the thing that everyone recognized about them?  Where’s their mindshare?  The logo.  The name?

Yahoo! has a tough road ahead if they want to make changes, they have cooperate culture to energize and layoff in progress (see C|net article: Yahoo serves up layoffs but no strategy or Here’s why Jerry Yang is all wet as CEO or Yahoo to lay off 1,000, Q4 profit drops or BusinessWeek article Yahoo’s Yodel Turns Into a Whimper).