On 8/12/2010 9:57 PM, Thaths wrote: > One of the weirdest things about Yahoo when I went to work there was > the way they insisted on calling themselves a "media company." If you > walked around their offices, it seemed like a software company. The > cubicles were full of programmers writing code, product managers > thinking about feature lists and ship dates, support people (yes, > there were actually support people) telling users to restart their > browsers, and so on, just like a software company. So why did they > call themselves a media company? > > One reason was the way they made money: by selling ads. In 1995 it was > hard to imagine a technology company making money that way. Technology > companies made money by selling their software to users. Media > companies sold ads. So they must be a media company.
My feelings about Yahoo are mixed and not fully thought through (I worked there in 2003-04, and have had and continue to have friends there for many years on either side of that period). However, I disagree with this piece on at least two counts: 1. Yahoo called itself a media company because they honestly tried to become one - producing and distributing all kinds of content. They took it seriously enough that they hired as CEO the guy who used to run Warner Bros. My opinion is that it was a perfectly valid strategy that they _failed to execute on_. 2. The piece of Yahoo that I had the most exposure to (the R&D center in Bangalore) was certainly a hacker-friendly place, at least during the time I knew it. In fact, I had the classic complaint about the management there that they failed to value any non-engineering contribution highly. I'd be interested in hearing what the other current and former Yahoos on the list think. Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
