I always thought that exactly this question was part of their demise. Although the word "synergy" is far overused, it's exactly what Yahoo never managed to create. Google brought people searching content together with people offering solutions. Facebook brought people seeking entertainment together with people offering entertainment.

Yahoo had it all - email, answers, news, stocks, search, and they even invented Hadoop back then to sift through all their data. They just never had any larger vision to integrate any of their assets properly to solve a grand problem.

They always just threw ever more noodles to the wall and tried to see which ones would stick.

There's zero coherency in anything they do, for me it's just a diverse bunch of poorly maintained and integrated services that's purely kept together with duct tape, page rank and marketing hacks stacked on top of each other.

It's the kind of slow death when there's just enough recurring revenue left that it's hard to screw things completely up, even with a league of completely dilbertized MBAs in charge battling each other until the last of talented people have left.

From 2013, revenue sources (quarterly):

    Banner Ads: $423M

    Search Revenue: $403M

    Other: $245M

    2014 total revenue for year was 4.6 Billion

Apparently they're selling a few billion dollars worth of ads.

Never thought the web ads market is big enough for both Google and Yahoo.

There are very few people with a correct conception of the scale of the web.

They also have, as I understand it, a metric fuckton of content sources (not including Flickr, Tumblr and so on) and a very highly-tuned content and advertising presentation system, plus the default footprint on various browsers. Essentially, they have a lot of default eyeballs and use that for advertising. Unfortunately, they've relied on rent-seeking in that space, and Apple and Facebook's recent moves may bite directly into their one profit center.

A lot.

Millions use Yahoo website daily and Yahoo email.

Yahoo is the fourth/fifth most visited website in the world. WORLD.

Yahoo's ONLY problem is that they want to be a leader in their industry. If they did not and were content with milking their content and user base, they would be boring but very profitable.

Yahoo can deploy many products to its audience and be a leader again.

Serious question: Can they, though?

I'm not doubting if Yahoo could build (or buy) some cool tech products and put them in front of their large audience. But the real question is whether their audience is the sort who would bite and eagerly adopt new technology.

While I am sure there are exceptions, I think the bulk of people visiting Yahoo and using Yahoo properties are there because they can't or don't want to change things up. I think how many of those hits to yahoo.com come from library computers that are hardwired to visit it as the homepage, from my parents computers, from people who will load the yahoo.com page to type "Gmail" in the search bar "because that's how the Internet works" etc.

The early adopter set that's more consciously in control of their digital destiny and eager to try new things are already giving their eyeballs to Apple, Google, and the swarms of shiny startups orbiting their ecosystems.

I'm not celebrating this fact. I wish there were more tech centers of gravity to choose from, and I am saddened that Yahoo (along with so many others) is unable to break through.

It is hard to build hit products. Think about FB what is its last internally built and independently famous hit product? YC had to invest in almost 1000 companies and yet they probably have a handful of hit consumer products? How many products should Yahoo shell out before they hit another consumer sensation?

Google (as opposed to Alphabet) really only has Ads, everything else is just to help get those ads in front of more people more often.

In the sense that both Google and Yahoo are mostly focused about showing adds, they are not that different. Google has just more means of showing ads that are more effective, and viewed as cooler by its users.

> Google (as opposed to Alphabet) really only has Ads, everything else is just to help get those ads in front of more people more often

Actually they have like ~1.37 Yahoos worth of non-ad revenue[1][2]

[1] https://investor.google.com/earnings/2015/Q2_google_earnings...

[2] https://investor.yahoo.net/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=92308...

I used to read Yahoo! News too, but the quality became too low and the bias too annoying. I still use Yahoo! email as my secondary account.

My Dad used to spend time on Yahoo!'s portal too, mostly for stocks and movie information. I never thought it was worth going directly to Yahoo, but if a Google search sent me there for a stock then I'd read it.

The original "synergy" idea was more about being a portal. But those don't exist anymore because search completely superceded it. It seems too late for Yahoo! to revive its search business. It isn't a good aggregator or content discovery platform because there are stronger competitors like Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook.

Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Finance are quality products.

Yahoo Sports was a quality product,until the redesign that I understand Mayer micromanaged. Now I find it unusable and I find myself going to nfl.com, mlb.com, or ESPN instead.

It must be terrible if you are going to ESPN.com instead. I can't stand going there any more since they redesigned the site earlier this year.

what's wrong about it besides the blurred background photos?

I think 30 percent of their business involves promoting anything Kardashian-related. On some days there are no less than 4 or 5 stories about them on the front page of their "news".

Clearly you've never experienced the joy and wonder of Yahoo Answers

Why does my arm shake and turn bright red when I'm eating dirt?

http://www.listsworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/good-qu...

Don't forget fantasy sports tracking!

Their fantasy football platform, at least, is the best of the ones I've tried. Lots of obvious product placements and ads, but good UI and UX, well-gamified weekly/seasonal trophies, and interesting statistical stuff I haven't seen anywhere else.

I agree, it also does a lot of little things right that other platforms mess up. For example, it's the only platform that doesn't penalize a team's defense for scores that occur when they're not on the field (e.g. an interception returned for a touchdown). It is, unfortunately though, an unholy browser memory hog as well.

And Flickr.

And Tumblr

A month or two ago they plastered pretty much every advertising space (fixed signs and city buses) in my city with huge purple posters that said YAHOO!. A huge, all purple private charter bus even drive through town.

From an engineering perspective, it's probably cooler/better to work on tech stuff (as the other companies have), rather than news or stocks or sports, where the underlying tech isn't as important as how it's marketed.

News and sports with comments.

Flickr