Bing-Hoo Yahoo and MS to combine SE efforts

[TheEnforcer]

That could certainly change things if done right....

[Hell Puppy]

Yahoo has SOOO lost their way. Talk about a company that really never grasped the hedge hog concept, they're the poster child.

For those who dont know what the hedge hog concept is, that's a term used in Jim Collins management books (Good to Great, etc). It basically says most GREAT businesses really understand from top to bottom what their strengths are, what they are trying to do and they stay focused on those core goals and skills and dont get distracted.

Yahoo is an example of a company that lost it's way. They tried to spread out into absolutely everything without a real vision of how it ties together and their core strengths. Getting out of the search business, is almost like a final concession.

When Yahoo was strong and growing, their strength was helping people find information on the internet with a large degree of human control. Anyone else remember paying $200 or whatever it was to get sites considered for the Yahoo Directory back in the day? It was worth every penny, you'd make it back ten-fold first day you were listed.

Unfortunately they never quite figured out how to retain that relevance AND still scale as the internet exploded. Google did. Pagerank is where their "human factor" gets weighed in along with a complete intolerance for false manipulation of search results....a google ban pretty much kills a domain and whatever IP it lived on.