Screaming Penguin

I just had to mention, in a minor rebuttal to TWiT 19 (and I keep saying every week we need to start a "tech podcast rebuttal podcast" - all sorts of stuff gets danced around and not stated, or flat out misstated on various tech podcasts, TWiT being one of the more prominent ones) that Yahoo! is making all sorts of great moves. The TWiT folks stated (if I recall correctly, dont have a transcript and its been a few days since I listened) that basically Yahoo! did not have that much going for it. In defense of TWiT, Leo did say they are "reaching for the brass ring" at Yahoo! right now, working long hours, etc, and that he agreed the recent aquisition of the Chinese mega co Alibaba.com was a good move. Leo sort of missed WHY it was a good move, but he did say he agreed with it. Steve Gibson noted that lately some Google engineers say Yahoo! searches return better results than Google (which the rest of the group dismissed). The Dvorak of the bunch of course scoffed at the Alibaba purchase and had general disdain for Yahoo!. This is what gets me about TWiT and often other tech podcasts every week. They bring up interesting and worthwhile subjects, then touch on an issue, and then MISS THE MAIN POINTS of the issue entirely. Alibaba is great for Yahoo! because its a huge market and its a hugely popular (and probably profitable, dont know for sure?) company. Its well put together and fits into the model of Yahoo! services (not just service provider entities as Leo mentioned - like SBC etc). Alibaba could be the eBay killer. Yeah thats a huge statement but look at it, its a ton BETTER than eBay and with some work and expansion it could maybe someday come to the rest of the world, hmmmm. (Someone is going to crush eBay, because their software is horrible, and because many of their policies, especially with PayPal, are also terrible, losing many customers even in a cornered market - ala CraigsList in the absence if real competition - no the current Yahoo! Auctions does not count, it sucks as well.) Basically the TWiT crew touched on Yahoo! and then moved on to "no one will touch Google" (Dvorak). While I personally agree that Google has a better search product, and that the Yahoo! main search page is a clustered piece of crap (they could make their "Search" much better simply by making Yahoo!.com go to a simple search only page - that easy) - I do not agree that Yahoo! isnt on the right track. Not mentioned were: Konfabulator Flickr 360 My Yahoo! (all the updates) Yahoo! News (different approach than GNews, better IMO) All this stuff, coupled with other things like Alibaba, points to a conglomeration of really useful apps which could be melded into a big single access service offering that would be hard to top, even for Google. Its not that Yahoo! is the best thing around, quite the contrary, its just that failing to recognize that Yahoo! is making some great moves and showing a lot of potential right now with lots of cool stuff, is well, very twit like.