Intellectual Property Law

The Pre-Old Media Yahoo!

By Susan Crawford

The obsessed-about news is the MSN bid for Yahoo! today.  Jeff Jarvis is pointing out that Yahoo! was just an old-media company anyway - so its purchase by an old-technology company is a two-dinosaur tango.  A deal for feeding advertising to the masses.

I want to say something about the pre-old media Yahoo!. There was a time, before Terry Semel came on board, that Yahoo! was in the lead with human-created search results.   The company seemed to care a lot about the quality of the window on the Web that it provided - it was centralized, sure, but it was innovative, provided a gazillion free services, and cared about good design.  It wasn’t slow-moving or Hollywood-oriented.  It was a fine, fun, energetic place, full of talented people.  It’s still full of talented people.  So, yes, the company apparently missed a few boats and didn’t have a strong business model, but it had a lot of good ideas that shaped the internet mindset - free, friendly, human, colorful, irreverent.

Full post as published by Susan Crawford Blog on February 01, 2008 (boomark / email).