I'm continually impressed with the things yahoo puts out, and it's usually pretty difficult to impress me. Pipes, yui, and yql are all exceptionally awesome, as well as the search API. However, I imagine if these were put out by google, there'd be some huge rave over them.

It seems unfair, and for some reason that troubles me.

It seems unfair, but is fair for a lot of people.

You know what troubles me? Imagine using a powerful search engine and they decide to sell the first 2 pages of search result to the best bidder.

Now imagine that they put the search in some difficult place so you are forced to see "their portal" you don't care about every time you want to search anything.

Now they put their links before to their portals in the search results too.

Add images ads all around the screen, making it slow to search(you need to load all images first).

Make the ads to blink.

Put the ads in a popup screen blinking all the time, that you have to close for searching.

Now imagine that a competitor "does the right thing". They care about the user, don't sell priority on search, don't annoy their users with images, they get what they need in a superfast text page.

This company will get my "unfair" support, and the other company my "unfair"contempt and oblivion. No matter now they do the same that the other company, because they were forced and will came back if they can.

It's interesting - all these things you mention are business decisions, not technically engineering decisions.

Yahoo has great tech products. Even during the heyday, the engineers seem to have been aware of what was going on, it just seems that the "suit monkeys" took things over and made a lot of short-sighted business decisions.

I'm reminded of the famouse Google quote (something along the lines of, when the VC's gave google money, they asked, "are you going to be run by marketing or by sales?" Page's response: "Neither, by engineering!"). It seems as if Yahoo is a great tech company run by sales people (or more apt, "media people").

The same could also be said about Microsoft. The smartest people I know all currently work there or have worked there -what's "holding them back" (in relative terms, of course!). Is it their business people and their internal politics? Sure looks that way after the Kin fiasco.

> Now imagine that they put the search in some difficult place so you are forced to see "their portal" you don't care about every time you want to search anything.

A "difficult place" like http://search.yahoo.com/? That's existed for a good 5 years. And it's a completely lie that the first 2 pages of search results was paid results.

I'm not a Yahoo"!" Technology Evangelist, but I want to express my agreement with sh1mmer. Being Google isn't the only definition of success. Yahoo is the best company in the world at selling online ad space. Search advertising makes way more money, but that doesn't change the fact that Yahoo is #1 in the market that they chose. They aren't doing bad in terms of media companies, either.

As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about online advertising, I have nothing but respect for Yahoo. Holding them to the bar of "why didn't they become Google" seems a bit unfair, like a relative of an early hacker asking "Why weren't you as successful as Bill Gates?"

Disclaimer: I worked at a startup that was purchased by Yahoo and I'm obsessed with online advertising.

I didn't "raise my views." You're either misinterpreting the original essay, or misinterpreting the comment above.

My interpretation of his comment is that by "raise your views" he meant "express your opinions publicly" (using the "bring to the surface" meaning of raise), not that your opinion of Yahoo! has somehow changed or improved in the last 2 days.

Correct.

What does this objection mean, Paul?

Possibly both, neither intentionally. Happy to be corrected.