Remember when they could have bought Google?
Imagine how different the world might be today if yahoo had bought google and tanked the fuck out of it. The whole modern web would be different. Perhaps the social media era would have never come to pass.
Bing would just have arrived earlier and taken over the search space.
Microsoft isnt well known for their innovative products, they usually reiterate on the same concepts. Every time they try something different they fuck up big time, hence the old windows meme of every second release being bullshit like win ME or win8, and now win 11.
I think if they had tried a similar product without google to emulate it wouldn’t have been such a world changing tool that is essentially the operating system of the internet for most users.
We wouldn’t even really have the web ecosystem and capable browsers if Microsoft had their way. They pretty much created IE to try to stop web apps from happening.
If not them, then someone else would have taken the mantle. Judgment Day always arrives, WWIII/Eugenics Wars will still happen… it just gets delayed in some timelines.
This is actually the good timeline. People hate google for their unsavory shit nowadays, BUT!
They actually had a very positive and important role in advancement of open source and open platforms. Chrome itself became dominant because at the time it was better.
Without google we would have an even worse situation
Mark my words: I think it’s making a bit of a comeback given Google’s enshittification. They’ve also been acquiring ISP email services and showing other signs of growth. I wouldn’t be surprised if it re-appears as an IPO in the next few years.
All search engines suffer from enshittification because the web at large does. Switching search engines won’t help escape it, Google’s results are getting worse because the internet as a whole is. Bing’s and DuckDuckGo’s results are just as bad. And unless someone comes up with a reliable way of filtering AI generated SEO crap from searches, it’s only going to get worse.
Do you remember lycos or ask jeeves?
Dogpile all the way.
I learned about them from* a print out at my library while using their computers (that I booked in hour increments).
Altavista was my go to.
webcrawler was my first.
Excite was my go to
Still have, and use my account from 2009.
Do you… uh… Yahoo?
🎶 Yahoooo…! 🎶This reminded me of Yoo-hoo
Just had one recently. They’re not as good as I remember lol
I had that experience quite a while ago.
6yo me: Its basically chocolate milk! What’s not to like?😋
16yo me: This tastes like chocolate flavored water 🥴
Wait, you’re 16 years old!? No offense, but you’re still a baby. Anything you want to do with your life, go do it!
Nah - I was 16 “quite a while ago.”
Yeah, I hear you…
Well, now it does…
When I was a little kid around 1990 you could book computer time at our very small local library. I would walk across town by myself. The computer was an apple IIe with a green monochrome monitor. You could play Oregon trail and a handful of other educational titles.
By then you should have had PCs and be playing things like Kings Quest or Loom.
My schools still had Apple IIes in 1995.
To be fair, they never said it was a new computer, just a computer. The things were incredibly expensive at the time.
How about AOL (America Online)?
You’ve got mail!
Yes. My dad is still using Yahoo mail
I almost forgot about Yahoo, as they lost relevance in my after the cybersecurity issues they were experiencing during Yahoo’s heyday.
!
Unexpected null factorial?
Billion dollar mistake: null or Yahoo’s capitalization on opportunities?
I r’member
I couldn’t tell you how long it’s been since I used Yahoo! to search for anything, but it looks like it’s still around! I still have an old yahoo mail account I use just because I’ve used it for so long lol
It’s now just a Bing frontend.
Sad thing, I still have a Yahoo account. Had that before GMail was even a thing.
No I don’t use it anymore LOL, I tend to forget I even have it.
Do you yahoo!?
