.

A L S O_ T O D A Y Yay for Yahoo By Andrew Leonard How do I love thee? Let me count the pages 21st Log Girl game pioneer Purple Moon shuts down   T A B L E__T A L K What is multimedia good for? Discuss the educational, entertainment and other uses for technology in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk   Search for technology books, software and more at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author     ____________________ Technology news from Teen in dispute with Apple over domain ____________________   R E C E N T L Y When candidates spam By Deborah Scoblionkov A mass e-mailing by a New Jersey Republican stirs up an online hornet's nest (02/19/98) Bear essentials By Tim Cavanaugh Christopher Byron explains how day traders have fueled the tech market roller derby (02/18/98) The war for Wired By Kevin Kelleher Lycos' takeover of Wired's Web sites sparks a bitter shareholder battle that could kill the deal (02/17/98) The tomorrow tribe By Etelka Lehoczky Virginia Postrel's "dynamism" manifesto reaches out to geeks (02/16/99) Confessions of an online sex columnist By Patrizia DiLucchio Sure, talking about sex is fun. So is telling people what to do (02/12/99) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE 21ST FEATURES ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - -

BOO FOR YAHOO | PAGE 1, 2, - - - - - - - - - - The first worry recalls the dilemma of Produce Pete, a greengrocer on Canada's east coast. Pete opens a produce shop that shames the local supermarkets' array of shriveled fibrous citrus. Overwhelmed by the vitamin-starved populace, Pete rakes in the cash and fills the shelves with more exotica -- vegetables from warm soil, cans of coconut slime and jars of "hot" sauces. The gourmet stuff goes over real big, especially inside Pete's billfold, and the produce itself begins to dry -- a bad batch of bananas here, mushy grapes there, until Pete's only escape hatch is to open an exotic meats counter, with free samples. Pete's too far gone now. Scaling back toward his core would be to retreat amid failure, while the inertia of expansion pulls Pete toward the concrete median. Yahoo's dilemma: Become a faceless portal or persevere as a remarkable classification system? Produce Pete didn't also sell a house brand of fruit, though, and that acquits him of the second great concern. Yahoo, of course, licenses its satellite services from a variety of sources -- maps from MapQuest, stock quotes from Reuters and so on. Yahoo may also choose to classify, or not classify, these organizations and others like them into its hierarchical core. The tang is back, says this nose. So now Yahoo's got its mitts into two honey pots: classifying Net content and providing it, too. Excuse the fashionable cynicism, but would you walk into McDonald's and ask, "Hey, where can I get a good burger around here?" It is ironic that the Internet, whose power swelled out of a distributed, decentralized system, is now acrush under a wave of corporate attempts to re-centralize the way to surf. With good reason: There's no money to be had from a truly empowered populace -- what the wallets need is an audience, something that the distributed Internet deeply threatens. It was no surprise when the old media dialed up and attempted to squeeze Internet content through a broadcast mentality. But Yahoo?! There's the rub! Its dear old classification system comes replete with a virtue that Pathfinder and Disney lack: cybercultural credibility. Attired thusly in freshly starched khakis, Yahoo easily slides by the Wall Street bouncers with grass-roots aplomb. Yahoo, no doubt, would bristle at the insinuation that its classifications, or lack thereof, are related in any way to the services wriggling inside its pockets. Surely, being linked to from the Yahoo home page -- as are Visa, Reuters, GIST TV, Travelocity and even Apartments.com -- offers a distinct advantage over competing services, subtly stashed, albeit alphabetically, several levels within the Yahoo bowels. The newly launched "Yahoo Business Express" program, which, for a $199 fee promises to evaluate commerce-enhanced sites "within seven days," sends a similarly clear message to plebeian Web sites that mistakenly bought into -- or didn't buy into, as it were -- the egalitarian mythos of the Net. Yahoo, like certain priests and presidents, has placed itself in a position where impropriety is bound to appear. In leveraging its position as present-day king of classifications to push licensed providers into privileged positions, Yahoo is fundamentally turning its back on the Internet from which it sprang and those who brought it initial success: Internet users looking to navigate the Web, not have it handed to them on a shiny green platter. This, in a nutshell, is the shame of Yahoo: It is leading the charge in forming an Internet that would never have borne Yahoo itself. The solution to information overload is not content-provider oligarchies strung in place with networks of licenses between creators and distributors; we already had that, and it was called television. A powerful and credible classification system for the Internet must be divorced from preferred providers -- heck, they never even should have dated. Internet centralization is ill-spirited and, simply put, greedy. Our networked culture gains no benefit from the new face of Yahoo, but Yahoo Inc. surely does. Boo on you, Yahoo! SALON | Feb. 22, 1999 Aaron Weiss is under constant siege by two aspiring felines, Ella DiBella and Borders McGee. Sanity and carpets be damned! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - A L S O_.T O D A Y Yay for Yahoo By Andrew Leonard How do I love thee? Let me count the pages Yahoo -- love it or hate it? Confess in Table Talk's Digital Culture discussion area. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.