Comments on: Yahoo acquires flickr

By: Monjo

Monjo — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 15:46:46 +0000

Yahoo! bought Launchcast a few years back and since they took over introduced adverts and subscriber models, plus limited the best bit-rates only to subscribers.
Obviously I know Launch.com was going bankrupt before Yahoo! took over and that streaming that much music (and video) is very costly – but at times Y! almost ruined the service, though it has improved again in recent months.

By: christoph

christoph — Mon, 28 Mar 2005 00:00:03 +0000

I agree that yahoo has a strong tendency to fuck things up. Their offers appear interesting in theory, but are usually poorly implemented. Nonetheless they're regaining some cred lately. As for google, i don't mind that they're branching out, i just think some of their stuff is way overhyped. Stuff like gmail, google news or google maps are pretty nifty, but all the hubbub about google suggest? Imho way out of proportion. Overall i have this feeling that yahoo has a stronger vision of where they are going with their endeavors.

By: denise

denise — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 09:01:45 +0000

Ever since Yahoo acquired Geocities and turned it into the evil being it is now, I’ve been of the opinion that any good service placed into Yahoo’s hands won’t be good for long. As for google, well… Everyone is using the internet to make money. Is it all that surprising that either of these services is branching out in areas that aren’t entirely related in their beginnings? Ebay is doing the very same thing. It’s definitely a problem everywhere.

By: christoph

christoph — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 23:54:52 +0000

To me the thing with yahoo is, they keep making interesting stuff, they just do it in the least appealing fashion. Horribly cluttered interfaces, forced registration, that kinda thing. Perhaps they should start hiring some top-notch usability- and ux-guys.
As for google, when they started off big a few years back they simply were leaps and bounds ahead of their competition. Now their search is hardwired into our browsers and, more importantly, into our brains. Search == google. Gmail is nice as well, but for anything else google does i have a hard time figuring out any coherent line of development. Besides, they started getting some bad pr lately and their “don’t be evil”-mantra might as well backfire sooner or later.
It looks like yahoo is getting their act together and google’s loosing it. Even though i use google daily and yahoo hardly ever, my money would be on yahoo rather than google right now.

By: gibarian

gibarian — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 13:56:07 +0000

I’m with you regarding the problems with using Yahoo. It used to be a respectable search engine, now it’s a conglomerate of any Internet service imaginable, too big to move, so they have to buy other services in order to advance. A recent Wired article compared Yahoo and Google and wondered why Google is favoured by so many tech-journalists, although Yahoo is bigger and has more turn-over. Well, it’s because it manages to stay simple, despite their ever growing list of services. Something Yahoo didn’t manage.