Remember when Yahoo hired a CEO who lied about having a CS degree?
https://money.cnn.com/2012/05/13/technology/yahoo-ceo-out/in...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Thompson_(businessman)
His Yahoo departure is attributed to thyroid cancer: "In 2012, Thompson was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, which was said to be a reason for leaving Yahoo!."
And Marissa Mayer became extremely wealthy for her mishandling of Yahoo.
The corporate equivalent of a terminal cancer patient.
What it was, is aptly described here: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/2848
Where is that today? Gone, I guess. But it could have been an Amazon or Shopify.
They also had a lucrative ad business. Gone now, I think.
At some point they tried to become a media company or something and did hire a lot of journalists, but they kept making the wrong moves and trying to acquire users by buying unprofitable websites like Tumblr and eventually ran out of money.
They have the name recognition to pull off something like this.
Seems like Answers, as cool and interesting and funny as it was, was probably not a major revenue driver or even loss leader anymore for Yahoo. Seems like it'd be an obvious candidate for being cut, as a deadweight project that siphons engineering time from initiatives that actually make money.
Sure, it's sad that it's going away. But Yahoo isn't a charity, it's a corporation, and "jettison projects that cost money and focus instead on projects that make money" seems like one of the most basic tenets of managing a business.
Like, I totally get the argument that when Yahoo or Google or whoever shuts down one of their services it's an annoyance for users. No doubt. But I don't understand how it's a sign of "mismanagement".
Considering that oath is an ad company and Answers is among the top results for many Google searches and most of the Answer traffic probably is read only this is weird.
Answers users give an intent what they are up to, which allows targeting ads based on that topic. Having mostly readily traffic means that infrastructure can be efficient ...
So yeah, manageqment didn't handle the position well.
My post was a general statement and not directed at any singular Yahoo product.
A few years later they acquired LinkedIn for around that much, and that's definitely been more successful than most of what Yahoo offers now.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-idUSWNAS8942200...
This was not one of them.
It never attracted high quality Q&A, and was a joke from day one.
Still makes me laugh
I sure hope they don't shut down Yahoo Finance. It's the best thing that Yahoo currently has.