YAHOO!
Yahoo was established in 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo. Yahoo provides internet services for people around the world, which is including search engine, Yahoo mail, directory services, web portal and others. At first, it was previously called Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide. as the sites grew and gain popularity, the founders want to renamed their sites to Yahoo, they could not get a trademark for their brand, so they added the exclamation point and it’s become Yahoo!, and its stand for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”. Incorporated in 1995, Yahoo! earned various companies such as ClassicGames.com and Rocket mail, which finally became Yahoo! Games and Yahoo! Mail. Yahoo! manage to survive the collapse of many internet- based companies in 2001–2002, but it sustained heavy economic losses.
As Yahoo! gain the popularity, it has to battle with Google which is a major competitor in the search engine industry for many years in an attempt to claim a larger share of the market. Yahoo! released its Yahoo! Instant Messenger, bought out the internet photo a network Flickr, including various of other features, and getting a 40 percent share of the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba. Flickr existence before Facebook and Instagram. Flickr is a photo sharing website. Flickr had plans to make a social network site, but Yahoo! has let go the golden opportunity and manage their website without having a clear goal. Despite that, the move making by Yahoo! make many Yahoo!’s rivals endured. Repeatedly, it failed to occupy new market segment, which is a lot of help to make that happen.
Yahoo! making a mistake that make their falling down. Yahoo! has never recovered from the dot.com crash on internet. Yahoo! missed opportunities and made wrong decision because Yahoo! came close to buying Google for 1 billion dollars, but David Filo convinced Jerry Lang to create their own platform. It’s an interesting offer available at Silicon Valley. Yahoo! is also missing a second chance to buy Google in 2001. Yahoo! also getting opportunity to acquire Facebook for 1.1 billion dollars but they only offered 800 million dollar and Yahoo! also had the chance to buy eBay and YouTube. Vice versa of Google, Facebook, YouTube, and eBay Yahoo! buy broadcast.com for 5.1 billion dollars.
Yahoo! make biggest mistake with not allowed paid search advertisement to happen with organic search results. By the time Yahoo! realize their mistake and buying Overture which is a company that created paid search advertising in 2003. Instead making Overture compete with google, Yahoo! decide to create its own advertising platform. The new platform took three years to complete and when the search wars were over, Google had won that war. Lack of clear vision and identity crisis comes to failure of Yahoo!.
Yahoo! also having problem in country like Korea and China. In December 2012, Yahoo! Korea shut down all the services and left the country. With its previous news saying in Korean, that Yahoo! Korea has ended. Users can go to the original Yahoo! for more Yahoo’s information. The sites of Yahoo! Korea disappear, leaving with just abandon
To overcoming deterioration that yahoo has experienced, strong leadership has helped other technology companies grow. Such as Steve Jobs (Apple), Satya Nadella (Microsoft) and Eric Schmidt (Google). But, Yahoo! cannot choose an executive director who could handle their organization and problem well, such as Terry Semele who is consider to be one of the worst executive director and Scott Thompson resigned when he was caught with lying on his register. Part of Yahoo! failure is Jerry Yang who is co-founder of Yahoo! stepped down from the company in 2012. His resignation was a huge loss for Yahoo!. It is different from others, such as Google and Facebook because they have a clear leadership from their founders.
In 2016, Yahoo! got bought by Verizon and joined AOL to become their Oath Division. After 18 months Verizon rename Oath to Verizon Media Group. Yahoo! as a free organization has long been lost and buried. It is still brand, but it is unlikely to exist as a real company anymore. Yahoo! having a lot of problem like their Yahoo Mail down, people cannot access their email and they cannot do recovery mail. In 2018, people can still use Yahoo! but it not working properly. Yahoo! company announces that they will shut down Yahoo messenger on July 17, 2018. Users still use Yahoo Messenger until that date.
Yahoo! can still be access, but cannot be compared to Google. Now, faced many problems like users cannot open their email, users lost their data, and they have to recover their email but fail. Google become the largest website because of their strategy works and they have the best management, when users some problem they fixed the problem quickly. Yahoo! not fully failed but it still finds a way to hold.
In conclusion, huge success quickly made Yahoo! drunk, rather stoned. What they focus on every day is just exploiting the banner advertisement business line. They ignore the need to develop core business in search engines. Yahoo! feels its cannot fails. Yahoo! changed from innovative company to a mediocre office company. Innovation at Yahoo! only flows in one direction, from tie people called managers and producers to subordinates including programmers.
There is almost no room for elaborating new ideas from the grassroots. We not only have to thank Yahoo! for introducing us to the internet, but also to learn from the illusion of success that could bring down a large internet empire that was the center of gravity at a time. This illusion can even alight and kill a technology company that naturally stands on the spirit of innovation. We are witnessing the most innovative technology company of its time that must die because they fail to innovate, be careless, proud, and consider the world is changing and Yahoo! is not.
