Image Source: yahoo.com
Well, before you read further, I want to make sure that all the content in this post is purely my personal views with no or less supporting evidence to it. However I strongly believe this is what that has spinned yahoo to the race for survival today than rather being a leader to direct the path.
I remember those days when I used to take 20 rupees from my parents and run towards a browsing centre (Internet cafe). The first time I started using internet was while I was in my 8th STD (ie., around 1998), where 95% of population in my locality haven’t heard or aren’t aware about something called internet and computer. I was lucky enough to get introduced to it by my cousin Abhi Jeet. He created my first email ID and showed how to stay connected because we both lived in  different parts of the country. I remember my first email ID was in rediffmail. It was an excitement and amusement for me to stay connected with my beloved cousin and pass messages just in seconds across 1000s of kilometres.
However there was something missing, which was the instant response and a conversation. This need introduced me to Yahoo Messenger (Yahoo Pager) just in few months of my internet journey. Sincerely after that I never turned back to rediffmail (my sincere apologies for ditching my first electronic identification provider). In weeks time, yahoo became my close buddy, not just because it can instantly connect me with my cousin and have conversations but also it gave me a gateway to connect with people across globe and beyond borders.
It was an exciting journey, to look for people in the public chat rooms with similar interest or from same location. During those days what I knew about the internet was only Yahoo and anything that yahoo displays on its home page. Using yahoo email was breeze considering the other few services I used. Yahoo purely played a lead in my journey to internet until the day came where I started receiving lot of emails especially those that were not intended for me. Out of the 20-25 emails I received on a daily basis, hardly one was intended for me and the rest were spam.
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But I stuck to yahoo because of the only reason the “Yahoo Messenger” having the public chat rooms, and the shocking news came when Yahoo retired its public chat rooms (in 2012) all of a sudden. Yahoo would have considered taking customer feedback very seriously before it decided to retire the public chat rooms (maybe i missed any such survey emails because of the overwhelming spams). But the impression it created in me was, there is no loyalty for being a customer for 10+ years.
Of course I am aware of the reason behind shutting down the Yahoo public chat rooms which includes drastic reduction of users, higher cost in infrastructure management and security concerns.
Reduction in User – has happened because Yahoo got a tough competitor in the market in 2004 with the launch of Gmail and the release of Gtalk in 2005. Also the whole world was shifting towards exploring more connections around and that gave the birth to social networking where Orkut and Facebook started proving their grounds. This stood as an evidence that people are more interested to get connected and stay connected beyond the personal circles. Though I believe yahoo pioneered in setting the social platform in getting introduced to people beyond our reach, it failed to cope up with the changing technology and physiological trends.
It still had a chance. It could have still captured the whole world with its messenger service. But unfortunately they left the race to the new comers like Whatsapp ($19 Billion acquisition by Facebook in 2014), hike and what not more. When the whole world was investing in mobile technologies and messenger services, yahoo decided to shut down its public chat and their mobile presence was just so amateur.
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I can’t speak more about the infrastructure cost and  security aspects, as I know nothing about it. All my views are very specific as a layman customer.
In short, what I consider to be the reasons behind Yahoo’s failure to be a leader are:
- Failed to be agile and faster to stop or control the amount of Spam emails
- Failed to take feedback from every user of Yahoo messenger before shutting down the public chat rooms
- Failed in doing an in-depth data analytics and study of user feedback and the changing trends in market
- Failed to foresee the emerging trends in customer behavior and physiological trends
- Slow and amateur mobile first approach
However I am still a fan of Yahoo and I would love to see a big come back of my most beloved internet company.
(Disclaimer: This is a guest post submitted on Techstory by the mentioned authors. All the contents and images in the article have been provided to Techstory by the authors of the article. Techstory is not responsible or liable for any content in this article.)
About The Author:
Vimal Singh is an avid writer and mentor of Software Testing and Startups. Believer of new age technologies and innovation. An Entrepreneur and Founder of a Gaming Studio, an Educational Institute and currently an Automobile Care.
An MS Graduate in Software Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology & Science-Pilani with vast experience in IT business handling various roles from a QA to Solution Architect and sales.
