

Ask HN: Is Yahoo Relevant? - ashleyreddy

I just visited the Yahoo site after about 2 years,
just to see what they&#x27;re about.  What I found was a bunch of aggregated &quot;popular&quot; news, none of which I would ever read.  I tried there search engine and the results were reasonable but not superior to Google. Every one seems to be touting Marissa Mayer as saving Yahoo.  What am I not seeing here?
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xrange
I just visited Walmart after about 2 years, just to see what they're all
about. What I found was a bunch of cheap stuff, none of which I would ever
buy. I tried their fountain drinks and the results were reasonable, but not
superior to Target. They also had lots of rack space devoted to tampons and
other "feminine hygiene" products, which being a man, I never use. What am I
not seeing here?

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ashleyreddy
Your analogy comparing Walmart to Yahoo is weak: 1\. Walmart hasn’t make any
acquisitions that are out of line with there fundamental business which they
later shut down.

2\. People go to Walmart and Target to buy similar things, relevance doesn’t
factor into the discussion.

3\. I doubt many people here know who the CEO of Walmart is, whereas we are
inundated with news about Marissa Mayer in Tech and Non-Tech news.

Pehaps I have to use smaller words xrange.

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dennisnedry
According to QuantCast
([https://www.quantcast.com/yahoo.com?country=US](https://www.quantcast.com/yahoo.com?country=US)),
Yahoo still has 74 million users monthly. That's a pretty big number and puts
them in the top 10 of US Internet Traffic. People still use them for news,
search, and other web properties such as Flickr. Rest assured, there is money
to be made from this kind of traffic, and Marissa Mayer is "trimming the fat",
aka reducing costs, which generates more profits.

~~~
ashleyreddy
Thanks Dennis. I see that the quantcast graph shows a downward slope and a
loss of about 8 million users per month for the last month. Extrapolating
based on this trend doesn't look very good. Are they doing anything to fix
this? Does anyone on HN use Yahoo regularly?

~~~
dennisnedry
They've done a lot, like rolling out new updates to Yahoo Mail (where they can
serve ads like Gmail) and other monetization things like offering prints for
Flickr. Only time will tell if it will be successful. There are rumors that
Safari on iOS will default to Yahoo, and that may help turn the numbers around
a bit.

~~~
ponyous
I would like to see Yahoo on iOS (even tho I don't use it), because I want to
see Google to have a competitor. And in the last few years Google is getting
stronger and stronger. I hope Yahoo gets a chance.

Where are this rumors from?

~~~
dennisnedry
[http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/11/report-microsoft-and-
ya...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/11/report-microsoft-and-yahoo-vie-to-
become-safaris-default-search-option/)

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MalcolmDiggs
Is it relevant to me? No, not really. But then again, neither is Snapchat or
Facebook. So, what do I know?

Wall Street seems to think Marissa Mayer's doing something right. (Their stock
is up over 300% over the last 3 years). I haven't looked over their recent
quarterly reports, maybe those would hold some key info:
[https://investor.yahoo.net/results.cfm](https://investor.yahoo.net/results.cfm)

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calbear81
I personally don't like what they've been doing to their web portals (massive
graphics, tabloid-style coverage, etc.) but that stuff isn't that important in
the long run. They've been doing a lot of right things in mobile with a great
weather app and news digest app that I use daily and have been reviewed very
well by users. If you told me two years ago I would be spending time with
Yahoo-powered apps on my phone multiple times I day I would have laughed.

~~~
qwerb
What do you think are some of the best desktop apps they provide?

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rcavezza
About two years ago, I was working as the part time CTO for a blog where the
owners would write stories for Yahoo Sports that were featured on the Yahoo
homepage. The stories contained links to related stories on his blog. Those
links would routinely drive 250,000 unique pageviews in under two hours.

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junopatch
Yahoo News is very popular here in the Philippines. Most Filipinos use Yahoo
Mail. Yahoo Auction and Yahoo Search(powered by Google, not Bing) are very
popular websites in Japan. These are just examples of why Yahoo is still
relevant.

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qwerb
I think it really depends on how you use it.

I have a Yahoo mail account but I rarely login to it on the website. Instead I
use their IMAP server with a desktop app.

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saluki
YaWho?

