Yahoo!: We Were Never a Search Company
The CEO of Yahoo! says that Yahoo! was never a search company.
Yahoo! has seen some big changes in recent months. In fact, since the company appointed Carol Bartz there's been more "shake-ups" than you can well, shake a stick at. Most recently, the company rolled out some homepage changes allowing users to update their Facebook, and share links all without leaving the Yahoo! homepage. In other words, it added extra features aside from search. The company has been touting itself as a web portal for some time now and according to Carol Bartz, Yahoo! was never a search company at all.
In a recent interview with the New York Times, Bartz says that she's more than happy with Yahoo!'s 20 percent share of the search market because according to Carol, "her fortunes are tied to her pages."
The Yahoo! CEO went on to say that the company will be investing more money in its pages to bring everything in line with what the company's sports page is like at the moment (i.e. original content as opposed to relying on content from third party sources). How is Yahoo! going to go about it? In her interview with the Times, Bartz pointed out that there are plenty of unemployed journalists at the moment.
What sort of company do you think Yahoo! is? Let us know in the comments below!
Check out the full story here.
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One I don't use...
One I try to avoid now since their deal with M$, and too bad since they were among the first. How can they say they weren't a search company, when they used to catagorize webpages before search engines were efficient?
^+1
i'll second that.
i personally use Yahoo for Sports/Fantasy/Games/News more than i use it to search the web. So i agree.. the main focus isnt and shouldnt be a Search Engine
If it was never a search company, then why did they start the company like 13 or whatever years ago? To me, yahoo! was a search engine and nothing else back then. Maybe now its not just a search engine...but it was at one point.
Every time she opens her mouth, stupid falls out.
I have no problem with female execs, but this woman is a ditz
Yahoo in 1996
Yeah... Don't know about you but this looks like a search engine to me :|
I always thought yahoo was more like a news/entertainement website, like msn,reuters, etc...
+1 to downer88
Yahoo has always been a web portal, it has mostly used third-party search engines throughout its history. First Inktomi, then even Google (remember the Google logo on the results?), until it only recently developed its own, which it is now discarding in favor of Bing. I used to use Yahoo as my primary web portal, until web portals in general became to cluttered for me.
Yahoo is still the largest online email service, which I still use.
Yahoo in 1996Yeah... Don't know about you but this looks like a search engine to me :|
what about the LEFT side of the page? of course it integrate a search engine.... what is the web for then? if its not to look for some information... you have to search somewhere...
its like a librairy.... you have computer to look for your books ... yet it isnt a search engine... its a library
it was always a search engine, but now that google has changed the game (and dominate it), they are forced to evolve and do other things...because they can't compete with google's search engine, now they're saying they never were never a search engine....which is just sad...and I have been using Yahoo since I started using the internet...heck, my first email address is from Yahoo...only recently was I "forced" into switching over to gmail...the features just cant compare...
yahoo search function was a category listing search, even when search engines where gaining a lot of momentum they still used they same ranking system. They referred to sites like these as portals in the day. They implemented a service that allowed you to use the interweb then started attaching services to their site, like email, user groups and news/weather. Yahoo didn't get big by having the best search technology, but by having more services and social networking.
I think its a shame they gave the yahoo search code to microsoft, I think it should have been sold to a third party. Everytime a maJor competitor in technology dies, a bit of geek inside me dies.
to be honest, i don't see what yahoo has to offer, as well as what bing has to offer so far, that I can't get elsewhere. The search engine "war" is kind of boring if you ask me. and yes, yahoo did do search, but it would take someone knowing their original prime directive to find out of the company was a search based company. They have almost always done something else as far as i can remember other than just search. Like for instance, didn't they try to be an isp back in the days of dial up?
Nope , they were making Popsicles and apple pies
what about the LEFT side of the page? of course it integrate a search engine.... what is the web for then? if its not to look for some information... you have to search somewhere...its like a librairy.... you have computer to look for your books ... yet it isnt a search engine... its a library
searching in a library without some sort of search engine, you'd be screwed up
back in the early days of the Internet I used altavista to find out what I was looking for, and after that, google.. So, I second that 1st post.. "One I don't use"..
Yahoo in 1996Yeah... Don't know about you but this looks like a search engine to me :|
It was a yellow book? But more or less a search engine.
they had news and mail as their focus plus an integrated search engine.
Yahoo = Fail
Every other "web portal" does it better.
That woman is a lunatic, yahoo held up remarkably well in the search industry, especially in comparison to Microsoft. They just never managed to capitalize on it.
I give props to them for hanging in but did I say that woman is a lunatic? Oh yes, I did.
All I remeber about yahoo was the, soon to be extinct, free geocities service. This was pre 2000 period though. Haven't been back there since.
Google is the King now.
Guys, check out:
http://web.archive.org/web/1996101 [...] yahoo.com/
First page of Yahoo ever. Looks like a search engine to me...
Die bing, or bling, or whatever!
they just admit defeat, yet i like their Autos page.
e-mail and messenger (yahoo messenger)
Email and instant messenger for me.
My first email account with with Yahoo. Still use it for my formal email.
yahoo.com: search O RLY?
How exactly is a "Web Portal" different from a "search engine"?
Google also does e-mail, chat, word processing, calendars, etc.... but they are first and foremost a search engine. I think Yahoo is pretty much the same thing, only without the minimalistic home page.
Never needed Yahoo.
I use yahoo.jp for a couple things, to check weather, since it seems to be the most reliable results and to check for train schedules, which is pretty awesome when you don't have a car and you use trains a lot.
My wife checks the site sometime for celebrity news, but that's about it.
When I was younger (like 10-14 years ago) I used yahoo for chatting and messenger, and never really as a search engine, so I see what they're saying.