Yahoo! Expands Open Web Platform Plans

Ian Lamont writes "Yahoo has announced it is further opening its Web platform to developers and moving closer to a Facebook-style social networking concept. Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh made the announcement at the Web 2.0 Expo, and said that while Yahoo already has open APIs for some services, it will expand the open API concept to other areas and make it more consistent for developers, while boosting the 'social' aspect of its services for its members. Analysts don't expect this to increase Microsoft's interest in Yahoo!. In fact, recent comments from Steve Ballmer suggest that Microsoft will give up entirely."

Balmer again

What I find more interesting than the "main story" is the article at the last link in the summary. Maybe some of this is out of context, but Ballmer just amazes me with the things he gets away with saying while still keeping his job.

Ballmer again repeated that acquiring Yahoo is essential for enabling Microsoft to succeed in the online advertising business, where both companies have been chasing Google.

Yet just the paragraph before that, the article states:

At a conference in Milan on Wednesday, CEO Steve Ballmer said Microsoft is "prepared to move forward without merging with Yahoo," according to a transcript provided by the company.

Ummm... Yeah... That's good for your stockholders (which incidentally through a gift I happen to be one of). I realize this is preparation in case they don't get Yahoo and of course they would move on without them. However, is it really smart to keep clamoring on about how essential they are for you to be competitive yet at the same time making it clear that you now have doubts if you can even do it?

Maybe I'm just being too hard on him or reading too much into it, but I did just finish rewatching "Pirates of Silicon Valley" last weekend and, well, it's just good fun. ;)

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Balmer terrifies me.

I seriously wonder if he'd be the type of person to eat a baby if he thought it would give him a competetive edge. Perhaps he'd eat four babies just to be sure.

leading from behind

So basically, this is yet another grasping at straws attempt to hold of the wolf at the door, by copying someone else's idea and further diluting their portfolio, and diversifying away from their core business.

When was the last time Yahoo innovated? In fact, have they ever?

And there folks is the reason why Yahoo is not long for this World. They've been very lucky to have lasted this long, they really should have gone under with the dotcom bubble.

Borrowed. Time.

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Their new web mail system. Mind you Google kicked them into high-gear, but you can drag and drop messages into folders and other nifty-ness like that.

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Why not judge them on the quality of their products instead of who thought of it first?

Given msn & yahoos dominance of the IM & webmail markets, i wouldnt write them off yet. If they start integrated these apps into the instant messaging side of th

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Why not judge them on the quality of their products instead of who thought of it first?

I very much do. This being another reason why I'm certain they've been living on borrowed time. I agree that Google's dominance of the search market isn't a good thing

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If you want further proof of Yahoo's impending demise... this story's been on the front page for about 14 hours. This is the 38th comment.

No-one cares about Yahoo. No-one. They've no fanbois, they've no apologists, no-one even really even hates them eno

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You use gmail, I use gmail, we all use gmail, and we all know why.

actually i use yahoo, not by choice or anything, but for webmail i cant be botherd to go around changing regularly, there may be migration in webmail but its going to be slow because nobody cares enough to go through the hastel of changing for very little

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I'll tell you where they have the opportunity to innovate in this area: Fantasy Sports. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have not seen any web services available for developers to build fantasy sports applications. If they open up their statistics and game

Maybe we shouldn't have said anything

On the one hand, perhaps Ballmer and co. have been listening to all the contempt among well informed techies that the merger is an incredibly stupid idea, and so perhaps we should have kept our mouths shut, and let them accelerate their destruction.

On the

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Every internet company that does business in China abides by China's laws. Google was the only one to publicly struggle with the concept, and fight it for a while. So that makes them the bad guys.

Yahoo is the company that VOLUNTEERED data to hand over jo

Social Networking Bubble

Call me a fool, but am I the only one who is wondering why we need *MORE* Social Networking? What happened to editorial integrity, with it's provider staking it's credibility on the accuracy it's content? Informative opinions from knowledgeable sources?

We're somehow losing sight of this, in favor of "social networking", which really just amounts to cheap content creation that generates large advertising dollars.

The internet is quickly becoming just one big complaint line - And who will deny that when everyone shouts, no one listens.

Re:Sounds familiar

Correct. This smacks of being an entirely reactive maneuver to counter Google's new App Engine [google.com] feature.

Not to say that Yahoo! doesn't have a real platform to offer. They've been working hard to keep up with Google, and even manage to surpass them in some areas. (Though sadly, we're primarily talking about areas that Google doesn't compete.) It would be an interesting task to do a side-by-side comparison of the two platforms. Sadly, I don't think anyone will take Yahoo! seriously even if it is superior, just because they seem to be chasing Google's tail. Until they start making the big announcements before Google, they're going to always be in second place.

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Um... a reactive maneuver to *counter* Google?

statement of intent [google.com]
yahoo joins open social [yahoo.com]
yahoo joins open social [google.com]

This whole "open initiative" business shouldn't be news to anyone with any clue as to what's going on.

Granted, I've got a bit more c

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No, the two are nothing alike.

The App Engine is the logical extension of the Java -> Python compiler they released a couple years back.

It's essentially free web-hosting with an in-built application framework.

Ec2 is a virtualization platform designed for

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Then again, many Yahoo sites are designed to work in all browsers, and you won't see much ActiveX or ASP.

That's part of why I thought it never made sense for Microsoft to buy them. Would Microsoft allow Microsoft owned web-services running on Apache, and

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what your looking for is http://search.yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com]
www.yahoo.com has changed into a portal for thier content, much like msn, fortunatly google, have left thier portal quite light. the main problem with msn/yahoo is that nobody bothers going to www.yahoo.com

Nonsense

Overture was acquired by Yahoo back in 2003 (which makes it practically biblical in internet time.)

Nonsense! The entire internet is only 3 years old.

Don't tell me you're a wing nut that believes in the "old internet theory?"

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Microsoft has already proposed a solution to help Yahoo! fix its business penetration.

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Not sure how MS is going to help them.

Flying chairs do not normally penetrate the right objects/areas.

And if a MS buyout of Yahoo! would help there is no explanation for the utter failure of Microsoft's online businesses thus far.

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Google gets this adoption b/c it has its fingers into every online ad outlet known to the Internet gods.

Wrong - Google gets this adoption because it has the best search technology. I don't care how many ad outlets Google has - if it didn't have the best search technology no one would use it.

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Your both right. Adoption and technology improvement feed each other.

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Ugh... I can't believe I confused "your" and "you're".

Last Measure

Sounds like Last Measure, the ultimate GNAA troll.

Regardless, I would be very suspect of any rds.yahoo.com links -- rds appears to be some sort of Yahoo redirection service. Treat it as you would tinyurl, etc.

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It's called GNAA [gnaa.us] last measure [lastmeasure.com] and is a rather unfunny troll package.
Avoid it by not clicking any links that point to anything hosted on on.nimp.org, notlong.org or similar. Be aware of redirection services like Yahoo's (rds.yahoo.com stands for re-directi