y.ah.oo!

With the recent news of Yahoo! buying del.icio.us I have to say Yahoo really knows what is hot right now. With the earlier buy of flickr I wonder what they are going to do with the whole tagging revolution going around now a days.

It also makes me wonder what they are going to do or how they intend to incorporate all of these great apps. Right now Yahoo! seems extremely unstructured and free wheeling; buying what’s hot and then link it to their horrible looking portal. Google their main competition at least seems structured, even with their numerous beta releases in the labs.

Maybe they don’t seemed “structured” because they are buying up apps around the web and not styling it with a Yahoo! look and feel. I actually don’t know what the Yahoo look and feel is but I’m sure the Purple and white can transcend more then what they’ve done so far.

Or maybe the “structure” problem is because of how all the apps are not on the same domain or at least linked to in your Yahoo account. Even google links all your accounts in one place. When I had to sign up for a yahoo id for flickr I created an account but it still didn’t tie me into anything but.

Maybe that’s their business model. Keep the hands stretched wide in a lot of different arenas and creating users by doing so and extending the Yahoo brand just a little more, oh, and don’t forget to copy the great ideas of the competition.

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December 09

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About the Author, Dan Cameron:

I'm the owner and solution engineer at Sprout Venture, a web solutions company that specializes in web development including WordPress.

I started my first blog in 2003 and transitioned to WordPress in 2004. Since moving to WordPress I've written a few plugins and themes for public consumption. Lately I'm busy engineering/building/coding and have only been able to share a few code snippets.

If you're in need of some web development, web design or custom WordPress plugins and/or themes contact me, I'll be happy to discuss it with you.

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  • Dan
    I would like to extract the whole "copying" thing and and replace it with following. That might be easier to handle.
  • I know what you're saying, I'm just pointing out that a lot of this stuff is just the cycle of evolving technology, not one company "copying" another to become successful. My point was that these things were being done by Yahoo before Google did them, so to say that Yahoo is copying Google is kind of silly.

    And about the use of AJAX in the implementation, just because Google did it before Yahoo doesn't mean that Yahoo is copying Google, since neither of them invented that idea. That's like saying that Google is a total rip off of Yahoo because they use HTML, javascript, css, etc. on their pages, since Yahoo "implemented" their site using those techniques long before Google.

    PS - This may just be my own personal preference, but I think Yahoo maps are better than Google's, in terms of driving directions.
  • Dan
    Okay but Google made everything that Yahoo! did better. And now they are copying there success by implementing their apps in the same fashion.

    Everyone did maps but no one did in a useful way like Google does. And now everyone is doing it in the same exact fashion.

    I'm not talking about the service I'm talking about implementation.

    Everyone did search, maps, email and others before Google but since Google has created such a following because of how those services are implemented people are copying how they implement maps, email, and search.
  • Yahoo had maps long before Google too, so you could say that Google was "copying" Yahoo in almost everything they do (web mail, search, maps, etc.) if you want to look at it that way.
  • Dan
    1. Yeah blame it on timing.

    2. GOOD searching with real algorithms.

    3. yeah, isn't that copying. There is a first then there are people that see how good it is and start duplicating it. Forget about email then, what about maps and ads.
  • I'll have to disagree with you on all 3 (mp3 players, search engines, and ajax). The MP3 player thing is probably closest to being true, but even then, there were plenty of players out before the iPod - it just took a while for it to catch on to the public and Apple capitalized on that timing.

    You are showing your age with the Google comment; Google didn't start until '98, WAY after people had been using search engines for a long time.

    Just because Google was the first to use AJAX in e-mail doesn't mean Yahoo is copying them when they do it, because it's a web development technique that Google definitely did not invent. That's like saying that any site that uses Javascript, CSS, etc, etc, is just copying the first site that did so.
  • Dan
    Ajax was a tool and Yahoo! is copying Google with using that tool for email, as is M$.
  • Dan
    Thanks.

    So had mp3 players but barely anyone was making them until the iPod.

    So was search engines until google made a good one.

    And they definitely are copying the contextual ads service as is M$.
  • Just got an error when I posted that comment:

    Warning: mkdir(): SAFE MODE Restriction in effect. The script whose uid is 579 is not allowed to access /home/211/domains/scatteredmedia.com/html/dancameron.org/wp-content/teb-super-archive-cache owned by uid 48 in /home/211/domains/scatteredmedia.com/html/dancameron.org/wp-content/plugins/teb-super-archive/teb-super-archive.php on line 193
  • Using AJAX doesn't necessarily mean that they're copying GMail, since Ajax has been around longer than GMail.
  • Dan
    They copied or are copying the whole "AJAX" thing that GMail brought along in their new Yahoo mail tha tis in beta.
  • Yahoo has always been a cool company with good services, I think they just don't have as good of a design / UI team as Google does.

    Do you ever read Jeremy Zawondy's blog? He's a Yahoo guy who's been blogging forever, and it seems (from his posts and others) that it's a pretty cool company. A lot of the Yahoo and Google guys are friends too, since they're pretty much neighbors.

    Their main page design does suck, but their personalized portals ("MyYahoo") are pretty good, and let you build your own home page basically with a whole bunch of different content sources (including feeds), kind of like that google.com/ig thing, which is one example of Google "copying" from Yahoo.

    As for the copying, when you reference Gmail, are you referring to the extra space they give now? Yahoo was doing web mail a long time before Google (much less Gmail) was even around, so I don't know if just upping the size is enough to say they're copying them on that point.
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