If you are from Yahoo search team, you will surely love this statement from Carol Bartz
..but this deal will make the difference between a great Yahoo! search experience and an awesome one.
Goes on to say how valuable is the Yahoo searchproduct in the eyes of Yahoo!
Better everything else: With Microsoft powering Yahoo! Search, we’ll be able to focus on the things we do best -– being the center of people’s lives online with properties like our homepage, mail, finance, news, sports, entertainment, mobile, etc. Sure, we’re the world’s largest online media company and your loyalty has made that possible. But we’re not satisfied – we still want you to say “wow” a lot more often. And that’s what makes this deal especially exciting.
Well, somehow I still do not understand the obsession with being the center of people’s lives. A startup (named Twitter 
) has done wonderful things that made people built lives around it!
Doesn’t happen the other way round.
You do not make people love you, because you offer every product/service they need.
People love you because you have one great product that they use daily. It’s that one F**king Cool experience that counts.
What’s your opinion? Do you still buy the ‘center of people’s lives’ story?
Most of these companies are still stuck in the seller mindset. We make a great product with lots of bells and whistles and people will love it – I heard that so often in MS, Yahoo etc. E.g. when I started using twitter – I never said “Wow” – however now I use it much more than anything else. You hit the nail on the head there my friend.
Is it sustainable in the long run to be one product wonder?
Also, people loving you many not make you richer. You want maximum share of wallet and maximum attention time. In order to get maximum money out of the pocket, surround them from as many side as possible.
By being a small lovable child, one may get a small piece of the pie but I am sure the major chunk of pie will be shared by big boys. Hence the obsession for being center of people’s lives.
As a consumer, I don’t mind using more and more services from one provider as well as the provider is good at it.
@Mayur – You need to have one great product and upsell other products. The thing with consumers is that they ‘dont mind using more and more services from the same provider’, but they use the service provider – for one major reason. For instance, Google: search, Amazon: Books.
“By being a small lovable child, one may get a small piece of the pie but I am sure the major chunk of pie will be shared by big boys. Hence the obsession for being center of people’s lives.” – That’s a classical Yahoo problem and that’s why they lost. If you were GOogle, would you invest all of your effort in building just one damn thing – the search engine (in the times, when everybody said that the search war is over?)
I’d say – be that small lovable child and grow up in a way that people adore you so much that they look upto you when you grow old. Think of what Google does – all they do, helps them create buzz, and that’s because they were that ‘small adorable child’ grown into a “mammoth” adult!
Oh boy .. Ashish is completely pissed off today .. I would say understandably so. Yahoo has traditionally been technology company and a very good one at that. Their success in Homepage, Mail, Flickr , del.icio.us was because of the innovative approach.
I don’t think Jerry Yang got up one day and said let’s be center of people’s online life .. they built or acquired innovative products.. Now one day your managements leaves you orphan and says that competitor product is better one (when it’s clearly a loong way from being one ..) Pathetic. Imagine your parents telling you .. son, you are ‘great’ but you know I think neighbor’s boy he is better than you and it will make our experience “awsome” and we can all say “wow” if we just get him to power your behavior … whole load of Bull$%#@ .. is what happens to a company when stupid shareholders and stock market starts running a tech company. They have lost their soul .. what a pity … cause inspite of last years debacles they were doing good things like BOSS.
Not pissed off…but sad to see Yahoo not taking any risk. They have some of the best brains..but management screwed up the story.