Yahoo! in Decline
December 2010

 

Yahoo! in the past was an innovator in our industry and had some major industry firsts. They were my first free email account that I signed up for back in 1995. They offer free Fantasy sports and great homepage news. But Yahoo has dropped the ball many times and can't seem to get simple right. They had a fiasco with changing their homepage look several times back and forth a few years ago. The fantasy sports module crashes browsers by the thousands daily. The back pages make you open up new entire browser windows when clicking on links like "Yahoo Home"!

It was our prediction two years ago that Yahoo would fall on tougher times and become much less relevant in today's Internet market. This wasn't an easy prediction to make. They have the largest client list on the web. But the little things is what turns people off. People get sick of cute little pop ups on homepages. People get sick of crashed browsers. People get tired of having to type their password and username in twice for email because an ad wasn't loading properly.

Well the prediction is coming to fruition. This week, Yahoo laid off 4% of it's entire work force. That is 400 workers. This is just the beginning. Yahoo needs to trim much of the fat and get people in there to streamline and simplify their site. I honestly don't know what they are waiting for. We want to like Yahoo! We have always rooted for them. But they gave dropped the ball and will be forced to become a "B" site, much like Myspace and AOL. These once great and powerful pioneers now are relegated to small % exposure on the web as peoples tastes and tolerances force them look elsewhere for easy web searching and entertainment.