
Introducing Yahoo Stores - AhtiK
http://yahoosmallbusiness.tumblr.com/post/94721026441/introducing-yahoo-stores-turn-your-idea-into-a
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brianbreslin
I saw this headline and my first thought was "what is this? 1999?"

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kenrikm
Note to Yahoo.. there was this company Viaweb you purchased like 15 years ago,
oh wait never mind I'm sure you remember.

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ChuckMcM
The sad thing is that they might not remember. A new product manager at Yahoo!
might be 22 - 24 years old, and that means they were under 10 in 1999. And
Yahoo! has undergone a lot of churn over the years and staff turnover. It is
entirely possible that much of the history has been lost.

While its clear from the announcement[1] that they do recall they had
something called Yahoo! Stores before, I'm wondering if they really remember
what worked and what didn't work from their previous version. Sort of all new
and all of the issues from previous versions fixed. Or is it just all new look
but we didn't do anything about the issues.

[1] "Today, we’re excited to introduce Yahoo Stores, a completely reimagined,
next-generation version of our eCommerce platform" \-- Yahoo! Stores
announcement.

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joshu
Congrats, Amit!

I met Amit at Yahoo (he was in Search; his Outlook entry read "Amit (Web
Search) Kumar" and I still think of that sort of like his middle name.

He founded Lexity, which Yahoo acquired, and he's moved up since.

I was an investor in Lexity, mainly because Amit was able to actually ship
things at Yahoo. It bodes well for him and their future.

PS - It's amazing how pointlessly hypercritical and condescending HN has
become. Are you really saying they can't relaunch a product that they acquired
once?

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posharma
I worked in the Yahoo Stores team between 2005-2008. At that time it was known
as Yahoo Merchant Solutions. Most of the features they've mentioned in today's
announcement were already present back then. And yes, this is the same PG's
viaweb.

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atwebb
I was expecting a [2002] or something similar after the headline. I have been
pretty surprised at the amount of revenue I've seen some businesses generate
through Yahoo Stores and, really, the only reason they left the stores was
because the merchant support was awful and the cut was way, way too high.

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zaidf
Yahoo is a perfect example of a company that has had its foot in basically
every great opportunity on the web. And yet, it sucks at basically all of
them.

The best thing to have happened to the Internet is Yahoo being priced out of
acquiring Google and Facebook during their early stages. Its pretty clear what
would have been made of them under Yahoo's roof.

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forca
Facebook failing or never existing? How could this be a bad thing? Google not
being as dominant or Yahoo getting their technology and yet also not being
dominant? I fail to see how these are bad. I use technology from neither
company myself.

I think the majority of these companies suck at so much because they try and
be all things to all people. In unity there is strength, but when you try to
do it all, you fail.

I don't trust Google because they have their fingers in every pie on the
Internet. They want to make money, money, money with little thought of
anything else or what it takes to get there or how much privacy is looted.
Yahoo is an also ran with little hope of being anything more than what it was
and is.

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MichaelGG
Yeah, it may have been a good thing for Google's tech to go to Yahoo and drive
up some competition, but avoid Google becoming so enormous. Eventually Yahoo
would have messed it up, so it would not be the threat it is today. OTOH,
Google's still going full speed, and competition seems ... underwhelming. So
Y! buying it could just mean we'd have search engine technology set back
years.

OTOH Facebook being so dominant has no positive effects that I'm aware of.
Hurting Facebook creates a win for everyone across the board. As upsetting as
it is, they really do seem to be passed the size where they can quickly fall
apart (like MySpace).

On a slightly related note, I'm also bewildered how MS could have considered
dozens of billions for Yahoo, but let Sun get bought by Oracle for so little.

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macNchz
Major sticker shock after clicking the 'Create your store' button—they drop
you into an order screen with 1 year of the 'pro' plan selected for $828.
Caught me very off guard. No free trial? I'd love to kick the tires before
they try to get me to pay for a year up front.

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sologoub
The lesser plans seem like an easier/cheaper way to kick the tires around, but
yeah a trial would be nice.

That said, 0.75% transaction fee seems really cheap if that's the full credit
card processing... Not sure if it is though. Anyone know what this really
covers?

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drusenko
It's a transaction fee applied in addition to the credit card processing fees.

There are many other solutions out there, including Shopify and ours, Weebly
eCommerce. We offer our complete plan for $25/month and have a 0% transaction
fee:

[http://www.weebly.com/#plans/compare](http://www.weebly.com/#plans/compare)
[http://www.weebly.com/features/#!/ecommerce-
website](http://www.weebly.com/features/#!/ecommerce-website)

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feelix
I currently use FastSpring and AquaticPrime for the licensing.

Would you be able to be a drop in replacement for them? currently paying them
thousands monthly. $25 a month and 0% transaction fees is sounding very
inviting.

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steve-benjamins
"Turn Your Idea Into a Business in Less Than 2 Minutes"

GoDaddy also has an ecommerce website builder (and like Yahoo it isn't easy
enough to compete with Weebly or robust enough to touch Shopify).

But what's interesting is that GoDaddy advertises itself the same way as Yahoo
does here. GoDaddy always has slogans like: "Get Up And Running In 5 Minutes!"

I've asked people internal at GoDaddy about this and they've said this is what
their users always say they want. So I bet Yahoo has run similar surveys and
had similiar conclusions: people want to build websites in 5 minutes.

The problem is obvious. Any website worth building will take much longer than
2 minutes to make. It strikes me as a bit of a tone-deaf marketing slogan.

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booruguru
> It strikes me as a bit of a tone-deaf marketing slogan.

They're just telling people what they want to hear, you said so yourself.
Asides from techies and designers, most people don't really care about
building a highly customized web site. Hell, it seems most WordPress users
stick with whatever default theme is included.

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AVTizzle
I love the irony of reading this headline on Hacker News. PG's running laps
around the internet.

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nwenzel
Are online stores as simple as blog + inventory + accepting credit cards?

I don't mean the platform is simple. Or that implementing a store builder is
simple. But the concept and the interface from the end user (store owner)
point of view. Basically, if you can create a Tumbler or Wordpress blog and
have a list of products, can you have a store?

It would seem so.

Pretty amazing how tech can remove frictions. And yet my cable box still uses
as much electricity as my fridge and the remote has more buttons that a small
plane.

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lnanek2
Not only that, but with fulfilled by amazon you can have them keep your entire
stock in their warehouses and ship it out for you.

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AhtiK
Timing is interestingly close to Amazon Local Register launch from yesterday.

It's not clear from the website what the fees for payments are.

From the screenshot it reads "When you get your first order, we'll ask a few
more details to complete the setup."

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yasth
It isn't that type of store. It is just online webfront, and is in fact just a
re-release of one of the older products in yahoo's portfolio (Since they
effectively no longer have search or category based guides).

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AhtiK
Agreed, my fault, it's not the same type of store - Amazon register is for in-
store swipes while Y! is for online store.

Yet, my understanding is that previously they didn't have the built-in payment
processing and from the screenshot it looks now like a streamlined process
without the need to setup your own gateway or Paypal Payments Pro or whatever
it was called etc. IMHO it would make sense to clearly state the processing
fees.

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yasth
As best as I can tell they just folded in Paypal a bit tighter. Which makes
sense, at this point Yahoo would have a hard time even coming up with a
better/cheaper option.

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sq1020
Has anyone had any experience with Amazon Web Store? Although I haven't tried
it myself, one of the most appealing things about it is that the customer can
use their amazon account and if you opt for the fulfillment by Amazon option
(which is a different optional service), your customers can use their prime
shipping account to get free two day shipping and Amazon takes care of the
entire shipping process. Sounds like a killer feature but I was just wondering
if anyone had any real experience with it.

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mobster
Yes, I did sell a few electronics I bought for Thanksgiving using this. Found
it very convenient - as easy as buying on Amazon if you discount the trip to a
drop of location (of the carrier of your choice, of course). The fee is ~7%
but totally worth it.

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Paul_Dessert
The criticism here is funny! You need to keep a few things in mind. Yahoo has
a HUGE small business audience. Most of that audience isn't anywhere near as
technical as most people here. They don't give a shit about the technology
behind the curtain. They also don't give a shit about how trendy it is. They
just want it to work and to them, Yahoo is a trustworthy partner.

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marcamillion
How does PG feel about this? I don't mean in a theoretical, reporter-seeking-
a-quick-headline kinda way.

I mean, as someone that literally built something from scratch that was
acquired by a tech giant some 15+ years ago....to have them still see how
important an acquisition it was to them, that 15+ years later (which is like
200 years in Internet Time) they have re-invested in this same property and
just relaunched it.

On some level this mean feel good...yes? But what are the other things you
feel as both an inventor and entrepreneur when you see this?

The reason I ask is because for me, I haven't done anywhere near that
level...but the little fitness product that I created that is helping people
lose weight and change their lives...hearing those stories still gives me
goosebumps and chills.

So I imagine this, considering that many acquisitions nowadays end up with the
acquired company/project just killed off, must be a whole other set of
emotions and feelings all wrapped up in one.

Would love to hear his perspective on that.

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dkfmn
Wow... they should have released this ages ago and participated in the
renaissance brought on by Shopify/Squarespace et al.

As others have said, they're in lots of businesses and this looks like another
half-baked example of too little, too late. Still, they'll probably make some
money transitioning legacy clients to the more expensive platform.

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dev1n
is this PG's Viaweb?

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general_failure
Wow, did it just drop me into a $828 price page without even letting me try. I
wish I trusted yahoo enough to give them that kind of money upfront.

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pbreit
Service looks incredibly dated and the pricing is all out of whack.

The whole "in 2 minutes" thing never resonates with me. To me it implies a
crappy service. Anything (sizable; like, oh, say, going into business) doable
in 2 minutes is NOT worth doing.

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themodelplumber
As a website-building shingle-hanger, I love that "in 2 minutes" services
exist. They are like a blowoff valve for my business. If a potential client
isn't going to take advantage of the particular ways in which I could help
them, vvvupp-PSHHHHHHH--I vent their project off to an "in 2 minutes" service
or Squarespace. "Why pay more?"

I'm happy to recommend those services and glad my business coach convinced me
to consider how valuable they are in communicating my market position. They
also remind me to think about ways to differentiate myself and actively
communicate value to prospective clients. It's a cliche but the goal is that
clients--no matter who they are--all win, and I win too.

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rdl
Seeing this announced on a tumblr is pretty jarring. I have no expectation
that a tumblr post will be substantial like that.

(google's official blog being on blogspot is kind of the same way, though.)

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mike_ivanov
$29/mo basic plan and no trial? Meh. I will not even bother looking. Why?
Because this makes me feel like they are dodging something..

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norseboar
Man, I hope it's still written in CL...

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bdcravens
Coming next month: Google Reader

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Eleutheria
I like the idea, but...

why twenty years late to the party?

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caiob
Does anybody still trust Yahoo?

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coldtea
Funnily, besides the "sticker shock" comment, there's not any other comment I
found insightful in this post (including mine, but it's a meta-comment).

People reminiscing about ViaWeb, other's name-calling Yahoo, asking if it's
"written in Perl", etc...

