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___Boo for Yahoo
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When Yahoo Inc. informed a friend of mine that successful candidates for a "Web Surfer" position would have to physically relocate to Santa Clara, Calif., and catalog from within the Yahoo sandbox, my circuitry detected a foul tang. The great embodiment of all things Net, the chief distributor of distributed computing, the pied piper of silicon capital -- and no telecommuters? Not even for surfing Web sites? Ah, the searing wounds of fresh doubt. There are those who have lamented the corporatization of the Internet at every node along its evolution, from the end of NSFNET to the spread of spam. These interlopers were branded as invaders, gate-crashers at the Net culture gathering, and to whatever extent their threats were serious or speculative, they were at least recognized. Yahoo, on the other hand, appeared as Santa Claus, friend of surfer and stockbroker alike, winning the Big Money and the Big Cheer. Which is exactly the problem: When praise for Yahoo equals stock market success, what incentive is there for the company to improve its quality or content? The trouble with Yahoo isn't that it makes people rich, but that its contribution of genuine value to the Internet is ever diminishing in service to the wallet. Yahoo faced a major identity crisis early in life: Born to catalog the Internet in a human-friendly hierarchical fashion, it quickly became swamped by its own mandate. Like a young Sisyphus who dreamed of competing in the Extreme Boulder Competition, Yahoo set itself up, nobly perhaps, for crushing defeat. While it would be no revelation to note that there are dead branches in Yahoo's treehouse, that some of them have been desiccating since 1995 is a point of serious concern. Were Yahoo focused on its prime directive -- to catalog the Web -- it seems unlikely that, several corporate expansions later, dead links would persist as deeply embedded as they are. Neither can one claim a scoop in reporting that Yahoo has been the target of an increasingly frustrated lot of Web developers, myself included, who are unable to divine the magic click for spiriting a new or changed site into the hierarchy. Then again, spend a rainy afternoon perusing the "What's New" logs to see just what the Santa Clarian surfers have been managing to keep up with. Pick any old day -- say, Feb. 17: 365 new sites added to "Business and Economy," 25 added to "Computers and the Internet" and an impressive two into "Education." This is no mere single lonely data point -- survey any date you wish, and the pattern is clear. One must conclude that Yahoo either cannot or has chosen not to pursue its claimed role as classification system of the Web. Recent months have seen an explosion of Yahoo satellites, services spawned by the mothership that have no direct connection to "another hierarchical officious oracle." From building your own online storefront to checking whether grandma's flight is still aloft, Yahoo has been sliding right out of the classification business. Yet it's still performing classifications -- and that's a legitimate reason for concern. N E X T_ P A G E .|. Yahoo and Produce Pete: Fresh links for rotting vegetables? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.
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