So here are two examples of why Yahoo is losing the battle with Google. If i had any Yahoo stocks, i would probably starting to sell them.
Example 1:
Everyday on my Yahoo email account i receive several emails from all kind of high ranking officials, widows of rich cocoa bussinesmans and many other so called “friends”. They have two things in common they all are from Africa and they all want to make me richer with a few million dollars. The only thing i must do is to give them my personal data and my bank accont numbers. How lucky I am, aren’t I ?
And they never get tired of sending me those emails.
So everyday when i open my Yahoo account i mark these emails as Spam because you probably guessed by now that they are all spam. But Yahoo filters never learn. I always have to do this cleanup manually. Google Mail by contrast learned in a few weeks and these emails land all in the Spam folder automatically. So now i use more often Google Mail and not Yahoo. In time i will probably quit using it because it makes me waste time.
I work in the software industry myself and i cannot imagine that Yahoo’s programmers are this incompetent. By now they should have come up with better filters for junk mail even if they were beginners.
Example 2:
I was using Yahoo Photos to share pictures taken with friends and family, one of the days i was trying to get in my account to upload some pictures i was “welcomed” by a screen announcing me that Yahoo Photos is closing on 20th of September 2007 and i have the option to move my photos to other services (especially Flickr – promoted heavily on the page) , download them 1 by 1 or buy an archive CD with them. Thanks but no thanks!
I do not like any of the 5 services offered by Yahoo. I was using Yahoo Photos because i liked it, i liked it’s interface and was pretty easy to handle. What can i say i really don’t like Flickr, yes i know that it’s hot and trendy nowadays but I do not like it. And as a user it is my way or the highway.
And for Yahoo the highway it is. I uploaded my photos to Picasa Web Albums from Google. Why Picasa? It’s linked with my Google account, it’s easy to use and with the Picasa software i could batch upload all the photos at a glance. And i like the interface too. I also like that i can link to images or albums from other sites and so on.
So, that’s why Yahoo is losing everyday, making mistake after mistake, going down the slope. And i know that this is a bad thing. Although i like the Google folks i would hate to see them without competition.
Laszlo Bodor
