When was the last time I used "yahoo!" the search portal. After a few minutes of pause my answer is, I can't remember when. I'm sure many of us have the same answer. I remember using yahoo for a while in late 1999, but yahoo was never a great search company, yes they were the first. But yahoo was the best email and the chat firm for me for a while. But now yahoo email has become catch my bulk subscription mailbox while Google's gmail has become my defacto email so it has to my friend Vishal and few others. So what is it that yahoo stands for, a just another portal company who is good for nothing but exists for me for some legacy purpose and some network externalities.
So why am I writing this? I'm writing this because when I read from business-week article few weeks ago about "will jerry yang change the yahoo?" I could not help but felt compassion for yahoo. Is a person solution to yahoo's problem. Absolutely NO. I don't think yahoo with it's current course going to cut out and become the leader, why?
I think yahoo is one innovation firm who has forgotten it's DNA. What do I mean by that? Yahoo was born as an innovation – the new use of internet to serach information, to connect well. But what has been last innovation from yahoo? I scratch my head and say chat. May be not, email may be not. I guess yahoo is one kid who forgot it's DNA as soon as it came to life.
That why does yahoo exists. My opinion, It's first innovation was not challenged for more than five years and it gave it enough time to build so called network extranalities for it's users. But Google broke it's two network externalities successfully mail and seach. So why should yahoo exist? If they don't innovate they should DIE. It's innovator's curse. Continue innovating or don't survive. You see Apple, 3M, Corning, Google and the theory get's it's strong backing.
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