Most of the comments I've seen on this 15-year retrospective of Yahoo's main page have focused on the aesthetics: "Wow, we've come so far since the dark ages of web design!" All props to the creative services people, since they've had to struggle with the increasing visual complexity of the page.
The Ur-entry page had one purpose: help me find things. Now, it packs into limited browser space a whole lot more, including...
The Ur-entry page had one purpose: help me find things. Now, it packs into limited browser space a whole lot more, including...
- Things I use (e-mail, weather, and a few other things)
- Things I'd never use (horoscopes)
- Things that they've helpfully provided, but are no help to me (today's top searches)
- Things that are completely mysterious to me (what the heck is Shine?)
- Things that I might use someday, but don't matter to me now (yellow pages)
- Things that irritate the hell out of me ("newsvertisements" about TV and movies)
Tom,
This seems to me that Yahoo has been lost from a strategic perspective for some time. Their home page is so busy and full of useless stuff, it seems like the proverbial "show up and throw up" strategy of inept sales people.
I've had Yahoo Mail for over 10 years, so I log into Yahoo pretty much daily. By now, they should know so much about me that they can put up a home page that is perfectly tuned to what I like, need and want.
In contrast, if there were a 10 year (or so) retrospective on Google's home page, it would look, well, pretty much the same as it did way back then.
What, if anything, does that say about Google's strategy over that period?
Posted by: Saeed Khan | 07/25/2009 at 10:24 PM