It's interesting - all these things you mention are business decisions, not technically engineering decisions.
Yahoo has great tech products. Even during the heyday, the engineers seem to have been aware of what was going on, it just seems that the "suit monkeys" took things over and made a lot of short-sighted business decisions.
I'm reminded of the famouse Google quote (something along the lines of, when the VC's gave google money, they asked, "are you going to be run by marketing or by sales?" Page's response: "Neither, by engineering!"). It seems as if Yahoo is a great tech company run by sales people (or more apt, "media people").
The same could also be said about Microsoft. The smartest people I know all currently work there or have worked there -what's "holding them back" (in relative terms, of course!). Is it their business people and their internal politics? Sure looks that way after the Kin fiasco.
Yahoo has great tech products. Even during the heyday, the engineers seem to have been aware of what was going on, it just seems that the "suit monkeys" took things over and made a lot of short-sighted business decisions.
I'm reminded of the famouse Google quote (something along the lines of, when the VC's gave google money, they asked, "are you going to be run by marketing or by sales?" Page's response: "Neither, by engineering!"). It seems as if Yahoo is a great tech company run by sales people (or more apt, "media people").
The same could also be said about Microsoft. The smartest people I know all currently work there or have worked there -what's "holding them back" (in relative terms, of course!). Is it their business people and their internal politics? Sure looks that way after the Kin fiasco.