./with Imagination

Yahoo! like America

Wednesday, April 25th, 2007

This is a story I’ve wanted to tell for quite a while; I think now would be an appropriate time. Please pay very close attention to detail in this post, because I wouldn’t want you to miss out on any irony. This is not a rant, nor an overdue complaint. This is simply a metaphor of Yahoo! through my experience being paralleled to America. Yes, The United States, of America. This parallel tale was also inspired and co-thought by a good friend of mine.

Arriving to Graceland

First off, let’s pretend. Some say America is the land of opportunity. She is the place to be. It’s what some regard to as Graceland. She is America, the beautiful, the great. Everyone wants to come to America because this is where everything is at. A world leader in various aspects. This is not to say other countries are not great. But work with me here. We’re talking about America, a place that receives most of the attention.

Properties like States

Just like how America has States, Yahoo! has properties. They can also be referred to as Business Units (BU’s), or groups. Let’s look at a few properties shall we…

Yahoo! Mail

The flagship of America. A place that has represented her country since the early times, New York. The statue of liberty of which represents freedom from desktop email clients. One of the first free web-based email services, and to this day, remains the largest online providers for email.

Then there’s Texas

Smack dab in the middle of the country and by far the largest property (aside from Alaska (more on that later)). Yahoo! Search. Search is migrated into nearly all products of Yahoo!. She is big, and she is everywhere. Everyone has done a Yahoo! search at least once in their life.

Y! Groups like Alaska?

Groups is potentially the largest potential to do something great, but it’s off in a giant chunk of land out where nobody pays attention to. Y! Groups is big, and they have the numbers to prove it. But they can be much bigger. If you’ve used Yahoo! Groups, it’s easy to get lost in threads and often hard to find archived content. Kind of like getting tossed into a big snow blizzard in the land of nothing but Ice.

Flickr, Delicious, Upcoming off in Hawaiian Islands

All three of these properties were acquired. None of them came to be great because they were started by Yahoo!, but they were nonetheless a great steal. Everyone wants to visit Hawaii. It attracts thousands of people every year from all over the world! I even personally use all three services on a daily basis. Nevertheless, any Hawaiian native knows that it’s not truly part of the states, however they’re still governed by the rules of it’s over arching parent across the seas.

YUI in California

California is a great place to be. I love California. Born, raised, and still live in California. This is where I would imagine the presentation platform engineering team to live. Or as most of you know, Yahoo! User Interface (YUI). Life is good in California, and people that work there have their work cut out for them. It’s a prestigious job, and the hard work goes with the territory. They’re a world leader in creating new standards for UI development, and it’s hard to compete against a team that gets paid for a living to come up with one of the most advanced JavaScript platforms in the world. I personally think it’s the best.

And other places too

I could come up with some other parallels, but quite frankly, I think the metaphor is clear. You could say things like Yahoo! Personals might be best described as Las Vegas Nevada, or Yahoo! Pets is like Rhode Island (what, you’ve never heard of Y! Pets?)

Where did I work?

In all seriousness, I worked in Guam. Yeah. Guam. It’s technically a U.S. territory. However we had no idea what was going on outside our island, nor did any property outside ours knew what was going on in our nook. It was the epitome example of being siloed. Anyone who’s familiar with the peanut butter manifesto knows exactly what I’m talking about. The funny (and ironic) thing is that I eventually moved into a new position within Guam after working about a year and a half in the same area, to a new desk that was closer the actual States. The sheer proximity of being closer to the 48 contingent states was more or less better than where I was at. I was actually closer to the window where I could peak out the window and see other properties. Nonetheless, my dream of moving to the real states never became a reality.

And this new place I’ve arrived?

As many of you know, I’ve decided to leave America all together, and accept a job at Google. And everyone knows that Google just leaves the world all alone to do as it wants. Yahoo! can be America - flagship of the Earth. Google has moved onto the moon, and I’m proud to jump on that rocket ship.