Things That Aren’t (Just) Search
May 28, 2009
So, what isn’t (just) search? The last week or two has given us great insight into this question.
- Yahoo is not a search company. Good call by CEO Carol Bartz. I’m glad to see that the stock has gone up: I bought some a few months ago, on the basis that things couldn’t get much worse without provoking a takeover.
- Wolfram Alpha is not a search engine. It’s “a computational knowledge engine,” and so can do some things better than Google or other search engines.
- Bing is, according to one of its URLs and to the video currently there, a decision engine. I agree with Erick at TechCrunch that Bing isn’t the best name. It makes me think of the singer, and of the song “I’m dreaming of a blue screen of death“.
For the record, I’m not a search engine either. I am married with children.
Yahoo Email Application Platform
December 8, 2008
Even though its stock has plummeted, Yahoo still has a lot going for it. For example, there’s the more than 200 million Ymail users (including me, although andrew at changingway dot org is the best address for email related to this blog). Many have remarked that Yahoo should do more with and for that userbase (again including me).
How about Ymail as an application platform? That would be obvious, and perhaps late, given what Facebook, Google, and others have been up to. But better late than never, and Om reports that Y seem to be taking the better course.
The program is expected to launch in beta relatively soon with half a dozen small applications running in a sidebar inside the Yahoo mail client (Evite is one of the services that is said to be building a nano-app for this new Yahoo Mail-as-a-platform). Users’ address books would act as a social graph, essentially turning Yahoo Mail into the basis of a whole new social networking experience.
The main problem I see is that the good ship Yahoo seems to be sinking, and so application developers may not want to move resources on to it, and users may not want to keep their stuff on it. Perhaps it needs a new captain…
Images of Yahoo
November 18, 2008
So Jerry Yang is out as Yahoo CEO, and many sites have covered the news is various ways. I love the coverage on 37signals’ blog, because of the juxtaposition of the Yahoo/Yang news and the job board. And no, I haven’t checked to see if the Yahoo CEO position is on the 37s job board.
I won’t be applying. I hope that The Flickr Founders will. At the time Yahoo acquired Flickr, I wished that Flickr could take over Yahoo. I haven’t seen much since then to change my mind. Whether they would want the job is, of course, another matter.
Here’s another Yahoo-related image. It shows that the stock opened sharply up this morning. That’s good news, since I bought some Yahoo stock a few days ago, on the basis that: things would either improve, or Yang would step down; and when Yang stepped down, the market would like the news.
Now, all we need is some news to take the stock back over the price at which I bought it. By the way, for those wishing to know my stock positions, in order to avoid them: I bought Google at the same time as I bought Yahoo, albeit for very different reasons.
Yahoo: Lonely at the Top
June 19, 2008
I rarely blog about executive comings and goings, but the goings at Yahoo are hard to ignore.
- Flickr is one of the few web services with which I feel a personal connection. That connection is frayed with the departure of Flickr founders Stewart and Caterina. But there’s fun amidst the fraying, because of Stewart’s resignation letter.
- The executive to whom Stewart wrote that letter has already left. Michael Arrington reports on that departure, and on the difficulty of keeping track of all the exec exits from Yahoo.
- Paul Kedrosky asks: Is Yahoo Over? Google’s choice of ad for Paul’s post seems to show a certain dark humor.
At this rate, Jerry Yang and Sue Decker will be the only executives left at Yahoo by Independence Day. The theme song? As you can see from the post title, I gave the nod to Randy Newman, but Bob Marley (Exodus) was also a contender.
The Morning After the No-Deal
May 5, 2008
The biggest tech story of the year so far is the acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft, and the biggest current tech story is that the deal didn’t happen.
Let’s review, from a few different perspectives, starting with Yahoo itself. CEO Jerry Yang poses the question Ok, so now what?.
With Microsoft’s withdrawal, we’ll be better able to focus our energy on growing our industry leadership and maximizing value for stockholders. We’ll continue to execute on our plan — making your Internet experience as personal, relevant, open and social as possible, serving advertisers so well they insist on working with us, and opening up Yahoo! in a way that developers dream of.
Meanwhile, one of the leads at Yahoo News is: Yahoo shares fall 17 pct after Microsoft withdraws bid. The story tells that Yahoo shares fell to $23.73 in early trading, while Microsoft’s rose 2.3 percent to $29.30. Yahoo is up slightly to $24 right now, which is $9 less than Microsoft’s last offer.
I found via Fred Wilson, a poll on where Yahoo will close today . Yesterday, his prediction was $26, and mine was $18. I’ll actually be happy if he is still closer than me at the end of the day. But I fear that a further slide is only a shareholder lawsuit or two away.
There’s another poll related to the non-deal over at TechCrunch: Does Ballmer Need to Go? Currently “too soon to tell” has a comfortable lead, with “yes” and “no” tied for second place. Those are the only three candidates: I couldn’t find “Ballmer should go, but not for Microhoo-related reasons.”
So the deal, even thought it didn’t happen, continues to create distractions for both Microsoft and Yahoo. Google is the winner.
Microsoft Won’t Acquire Yahoo!
May 3, 2008
To put it in a few other ways:
- Ballmer backs off, writes to Yang that “clearly a deal in not to be.”
- Yahoo can stop worrying about Microsoft, and start worrying about shareholder lawsuits. As Om puts it:
They said no to $31-a-share bid. (Apparently, Microsoft raised it to $33 a share… ) If the stock skids to say $21 a share, the shareholders are going to be might pissed… In other words, at a time when Yahoo, its management and its board of directors need to be focused on rebooting the company, they are going to be distracted by these nagging problems.
- Of course, if Y! stock falls that low, Microsoft might be back.
I was wrong. I thought that the deal would happen, because it seemed by far the best that Y! shareholders were going to do. I still don’t how Y! stock does anything but plummet next week, and I don’t see how it gets up to Microsoft’s offer price in the forseeable future.
Video on Flickr
April 8, 2008
The advent of video on Flickr has been long. It’s hard to see how the birth could have been anything but an anticlimax (unless it happened in a stable with a star overhead, three righteous dudes bringing schwag, etc.).
The gospel according to Michael (Arrington) describes Flickr video as a unique experience. I’d describe it as… neat. That’s based only on the first video on the Flickr blog, on Mike’s post, and on the comments thereon.
There are limits on video clips. You have to have a Pro account, and you can’t upload videos longer than 90 seconds. Neither of these limits bothers me. I consider my Flickr Pro account $25/year well spent, even though it’s one of the very few web services for which I pay anything at all.
The 90 second limit reinforces Flickr as the site for stuff you took with your digital camera. Most such cameras can capture short video clips. I rarely use that feature of my camera, but Flickr Video might change that.
Yes, Flickr Video might have allowed long clips, and might have been free. But there would still have been an “is that all there is?” response, partly because of YouTube, partly because of the above-mentioned wait for Flickr Video.
By the way, I saw Mike’s post on Techmeme before it appears in my feed reader. That’s more of a positive comment on Techmeme than it is a negative comment on Google Reader.
Music Managers on the Move
April 3, 2008
Some recent coverage of executives taking new jobs in the music industry takes a rather religious tone. Yahoo loses its musical soul is how Mike Arrington described the departure of Ian Rogers to become CEO of Topspin Media. Can Doug Merrill Save Music? asked Stephen Wildstrom, reporting on another move. Staci D. Kramer interviewed Doug, the Google CIO who is leaving… to join EMI as president of digital business.
I think that there’s a rather big difference between saving music and saving EMI. If music needs saving, then I think its rather more likely to be saved by Topspin, with its mission to help independent artists make a living, than by anyone at EMI or any other major label.
WordPress.com, Google, Yahoo Making Music Together
February 27, 2008
For those of us hosted at WordPress.com, there are multiple ways to include music in a post. the simplest is to point the WordPress audio player at an MP3 file.
This raises the question of where to stash the MP3 files. In a recent support forum thread, DZonson suggested the use of Google Pages. You use Google Page Creator to set up a site, upload the MP3s, put them on a page, publish the page, and you can then use the WordPress MP3 player at the MP3s.
You can take one more step in order to make such GPC pages available as playlists. You can edit each page’s html to add a line of javascript invoking the Yahoo Media Player. I like this simple, lightweight player, and I like the way it turns a storage bin for MP3s into a page that can be made interesting in its own right.
I should note that GPC is part of Google labs, which is a place for projects “that aren’t quite ready for prime time.” GPC imposes space limits, currently 10MB on a file and 100MB on a site (but you can have multiple sites).
I should also note that Yahoo Media Player can’t be used directly at WordPress.com itself, since it is javascript. I wish it could be made available, in much the same way as services such as Sonific are available.
Jill Sobule: Au Revoir, Albania, etc.
February 25, 2008
I note, with sadness but without surprise, the So Long post at the Jill Sobule and the Provocateurs blog.
Well, we kind of knew it was coming. We didn’t quite fit… But it was a good idea –to mix music with politics and social issues… I had a great time. Yahoo pretty much allowed us to write whatever we wanted…
I got to hear and converse with people that I would never, on my own blog, encounter. What’s the point of preaching to the converted? On our last post on Evangelicals and gays, we did encounter some nut jobs, but we also heard from intelligent and thoughtful Christians. We actually had peaceful dialogue…
The above quote demonstrates that Jill is a grownup. She is gracious and mature about Yahoo, which has just dropped the blog she had there, and about people who have disagreed with her on said blog.
Jill is also a girl genius. That she has been so since she was, well, a girl, is demonstrated by this song, which she wrote as a teenager: “Don’t Fuck With Me.” I hope you won’t be put off by the title; I consider it one of the least offensive songs I’ve ever heard.
I got it from the Show and Tell page at Jill’s main site. By the way, the same page also currently features a song from “the forthcoming release of songs from the musical Prozak and the Platypus.”
Jill is a wonderful live performer. Here she is doing “Resistance Song,” which is my all-time favorite song about reincarnation.
Those intrepid few of you who’ve got this far may be wondering about the Albania reference. Well, we used to have an Albanian restaurant round the corner from us. I liked it a lot, but felt that it wouldn’t last at that location. But the same people are doing well with their new venture.
Likewise, Jill didn’t fit as a blogger at Yahoo Music, but she has lots of other things going on, several of which she links to in the So Long post.
