What Happened To Yahoo?

It was the Internet’s #1 site for years

Remember Yahoo? Remember this?

In the early days of the Web, nothing could touch the juggernaut that was AOL. With a built in user base who got their Internet access through the service, it seemed no one could touch them. Their Start page was #1 for years. Yahoo was a strong second, but definitely a second. MSN briefly challenged them for second place in 1998 (when Windows 98 was released) but couldn’t hold on.

Until 2000/2001, when Yahoo came from behind in a stunning drive that overtook AOL and left it in the dust. AOL never regained the #1 spot and quickly devolved into relative obscurity.

Yahoo maintained that #1 spot - despite rival Google launching in 1998 - until 2006, followed by the two giants battling it out for the next few years, first one dominant, then the other. It’s a surprise to no one that Google eventually triumphed.

But I still had a soft spot for Yahoo until recent years. I maintained my Yahoo email account - mommadillo at well duh - and visited occasionally to participate in the comments of the Yahoo News site. In recent years, two developments have impinged on my experience - the imposition of an automated moderation system, and the concurrent degradation of site performance to the point it’s barely usable.

Pages that reload themselves in the middle of composing a comment, pages that take forever to load because of either ads, poor coding, underpowered servers, or all of the above, pages where you’re logged in up at the top of the page but the comment box has a “Log In” button, all accompanied by idiot mod-bots that bounce comments for saying “poop” in stories that say “Fuck” in both the headlines and the body of the story. It’s a real mess.

I kept wondering - what could have happened to the former #1 site on the Internet to turn it into such a dysfunctional mess? So I did a Google (of course) search for “What happened to Yahoo?” and found this in their Wikipedia (of course) entry:

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/09/01/2290243/0/en/Apollo-Funds-Complete-Acquisition-of-Yahoo.html

So essentially the same thing happened to Yahoo that happened to my old job - it got Apollo Global Managemented. They bought the place I worked and eventually decided to “bring my job in-house” and have it done by a company employee rather than a contractor. I was of course “invited to apply” for my job, but was NOT simply offered the position, as had been standard practice in the past. They obviously didn’t want me, and I couldn’t totally blame them. My actual employer would have made them buy out my contract if they chose me, and the goal was saving money, not spending it. (they did the same thing to three younger contractors, making a successful discrimination claim unlikely)

But - and they were aware of this, I was there ten years, much longer than Apollo - I was a 67 year old widower with a heart condition. I was going to work until I turned 70 and then retire. Less than three years and I’d have been out of their hair (and off their balance sheet) for good, avoiding the bad optics of dumping the old sick guy right before he retires. (I was also an excellent employee, getting an 8% raise one year and 11% another, and always at least 3-4%, plus a nice bonus)

Guess you can probably figure out which option they chose. Fuck billionaires. They ALL suck, and care far more about money than people. There’s your sociopaths. They’re doing the same thing to Yahoo - squeeze out whatever value you can, discard the husk.

It’s sad, really. They used to be the #1 site on the Internet. Thanks to billionaires, they’re a bad joke.