Whenever someone at Yahoo! makes headlines for something or the other, people are always quick to start the Yahoo! bashing. Although we don’t think Yahoo! is the coolest company out there either, they’re certainly not another AOL as people love to imply. Yahoo!, like any other company/corporation/media-giant out there does some things right, some things wrong, and beats the hell out of the competition in other areas; but for some reason, people tend to forget.

Yahoo!’s biggest obstacle to success and popularity today is that despite all of it’s Web 2.0 efforts (like an extremely-hyped WordPress Blog, Web 2.0 AJAX toolkits, a re-designed email interface, etc., etc.), it remains associated with “old” in the minds of many geeks today. That’s not necessarily true, and as you will see from some of the points below, the only archaic thing left at Yahoo! is the Management.

Without further ado, the list in increasing order of “perfection:“

1. Yahoo! Answers
   Just recently, Google Answers closed up shop. No explicit reasons were given, but obviously it was a flop. Besides the terrible 1980s interface and lack of community-feel to it (it was more like a business), it just wasn’t popular enough. The reason is that Yahoo! Answers did a hell of a lot better. Plus it’s free.
   
   Although the answers model differs completely between the two, in the end it was ask a question, get an answer. Yahoo! Answers is accessible via a much more user-friendly interface, and it actually has an active user community to keep it going – the most important ingredient in any Web 2.0 site today.
2. APIs for Programmers
   Yahoo!’s extensive API library and various odds and ends for programmers and coders is second to none – except Microsoft’s, but that’s different. ((You can’t honestly compare the thousands of APIs Microsoft produces for it’s own OS to the useful freebies provided by Yahoo! for website developers)) The point is, Yahoo! reaches out to the developers much more than any other corporate monstrosity out there today. From simple spelling-correction APIs to tag-suggestion modules, from AJAX libraries to sample files and support, you can’t beat Yahoo! when it comes to developer-support.
   
   Still not convinced? Surely you’ve heard of the Prototype (TM) library, used in virtually every big Web 2.0 package out there? Let’s just say Yahoo!’s framework rips it to shreds.
3. Yahoo Mail
   Yahoo’s email may be the least “dramatic” of the big three right now (Gmail, Live Mail, and itself), but it’s nothing to slight at. The newly re-designed Yahoo Mail is just as slick, but it’s Yahoo! Unlike Gmail, that doesn’t mean it’s cool and totally Web 2.0, but that it’s reliable, extensive, and always on. Whereas Live Mail’s interface is iffy and slow, Yahoo! just has slow & under-powered servers, but the script itself is excellent. Gmail takes hours to initialize the first load, Yahoo! doesn’t. Most importantly, Yahoo!’s email is built on years of rock-solid reliability, and has the very best spam control from all three!
   
   It’s always on, loads fast enough, doesn’t require a bleeding-edge browser, is as close to spam-free webmail as you can get. What more can you ask from a webmail service?? ((IMAP support of course!))
4. Yahoo.com
   No, that’s not a typo. Yahoo.com isn’t the number 1 most visited web page in the world for nothing. “Web 2.0” start-up pages with customized RSS feeds and widgets and stuff ((Offered by Google and Microsoft)) may be great at first, but it’s nice to have all the content Yahoo! gives you all at one go. And unlike MSN.com, Yahoo.com uses a much more straight-forward approach with slightly nicer (more down-to-earth) aesthetics. Sure, it’s not as flashy; but remember, flashy isn’t always good.
   
   Yahoo.com’s homepage gives you what you need to know, and a bit of what you don’t. It has interesting stories (like MSN in that sense), and no ads. No wonder it’s number 1.
5. We lied.
   Yep. There’s only 4 things Yahoo! does best, that’s probably why no one likes them! (Kidding!) As a matter of fact, there's one more thing, it's just not that big of a deal. More information on this later.

So if Yahoo does all these things and does them this well, why aren’t their stocks reflecting it? More importantly, why aren’t the people (read: geeks) satisfied? Read on.

As good as Yahoo! may be, a chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link. And at Yahoo!, that’s the management. They have plenty of excellent products and services, and the first thing they teach you in Business 101 is: Focus on your strengths. But Yahoo!’s management refuse to do that, instead wasting time developing or purchasing a variety of mediocre content and services that aren’t worth the effort.

When your site is the number one most visited in the entire world and your homepage is the homepage of millions of computer users around the world, you’d have to a total moron to mess that up. Unfortunately, it seems that’s the case. With the amount of money and resources Yahoo! has, it’s rather pointless to keep hitting a broken nail on the (non-existent) head. If something doesn’t work, write it off as a bad job, don’t keep insisting on keeping it alive!

There’s nothing wrong with people leaving your site every once in a while to find something else where. Especially if you know you can’t help them. Who the hell uses Yahoo! for shopping? And when thousands of real free hosting accounts exist, why people continue to opt for GeoCities is beyond us. ((Well, not really. It’s reliable and free. And crippled. Other services provide much greater flexibility, but there’s not much to be said for their reliability or lifespan… But still!)) Instead of adding a mediocre version of YouTube to Yahoo!, management should be focused on improving the Fantasy Football interface – after all, that’s something else that Yahoo! does better than the rest!

Who the hell goes to Yahoo! for Real Estate? That’s what eBay is for! And food!? Thousands of recipe sites and tip-columns exist literally all over the web, yet Yahoo! has to stick their overly-long nose where it doesn’t fit. And if Yahoo! owns flickr, what do they need Yahoo! Photos for!? Now that Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger are on the same network, they really really need a new messenger interface to keep people from leaving their client.

If life is about change, business is about how to never stop changing. In the course of 5 or 10 years, it’s natural for the demand for certain products and services to go up, and for other such products/services to go down. There’s nothing wrong with people paying less attention to Yahoo! photos because they now use Yahoo! flickr instead.

That’s Yahoo!’s problem. A refusal to change. Before the mail re-design, it hadn’t changed in 5 or 6 years. And it won’t change again for another half-decade or so. That’s Yahoo!, they have the best of everything (well, some things), but they bungle it all up because they’re not willing to go with the flow. Then of course, their CEO has to stand and make a speech – and the community complains. It’s one big cycle that’s not going to end for a long time.