Is Google Just Another Yahoo!?

You might not know it, but Yahoo! was one of the first Web directories. Directories were all the rage in the early days of the Web - in fact, I actually have a link to one of the very, very first Web directories in My Yahoo! Links. (And isn't that ironic? Don't you think?) Apparently, Yahoo! discontinued their "MyWeb" service; you can now find your old favorites under Bookmarks.

This perfectly illustrates the very thing I came here to post about: Where Yahoo! went wrong and why Google may be doing the same thing.

Yahoo! began as a Web directory. Real people (just two of them, in fact) combed the Web to find the best sites and resources it had to offer, and organized them into categories and sub-categories, ad infinitum. While the directory still exists, Google basically killed directories; as search became more powerful, directories fell out of favor, and by 2000, Yahoo! was downplaying its very... raison d'être! Even before then, though, Yahoo! was adding features for which people were looking elsewhere to find (weather, headlines, maps, and so forth) - or what was known then as "sticky" content.

The purpose that the directory did and still does serve is browsing - the ability to look through an organized collection of selected sites, in contrast to searching a much larger database of nonselective Web pages.
- Randolph Hock
Yahoo! to the Max

But Yahoo! didn't include this information just to retain visitors - it was a natural growth of its original organizational efforts; Yahoo!'s goal was "to organize the Web," and while the directory did this on one level, the services and features Yahoo! began carrying did so on another. Yahoo! was still doing what it set-out to do from the start: organizing the Web's information so that it was easier for the end-user to find and use.

But don't think I'm romanticizing the Web's humble beginnings - sure, we were all about "the free exchange of ideas" and... shit, but Yahoo! most certainly was concerned with all that was "sticky" - it had gone public in 1996. Half of America had 10+ CDs from one of the Web's first acronyms and Amazon was famous for having absolutely no hope for a profit, nor even a model by which to lose the millions already invested in it! The Web was about a year away from the dotCom Boom - and exactly one Superbowl away from the dotCom Bust - and Yahoo! blew the whole thing by failing to remain true to its mission statement.

Yahoo! moved into print with Yahoo! Internet Life (YIL) - a print magazine dedicated to online life (I'm just saying - and not without irony, as I was a subscriber!) - and then moved into basically every other aspect of the entire Internet! Instead of organizing the Web, Yahoo! began imitating it, offering its own version of every product and service which made even the slightest ripple in what was quickly becoming a bottomless ocean.

Google is doing the very same thing, only it is simply buying the Web. To a lesser extent, Google's becoming a portal is also a logical extension of its primary mission - but to a far lesser extent. After all, Yahoo! was looking to provide some structure to the Information Superhighway, where Google was only looking to index it.

© C Harris Lynn, 2009