Lots of press lately about how Yahoo is moribund, in trouble, what will it do, and so forth. To me it seems rather straightforward: While search may be Google's game, there is room for more than one provider of online consumer software. No doubt, Google Docs is great. But YMail beats GMail hands down in my book. I am so happy to pay $25 per year for YMail without ads.
And there is a long way to go to build truly high-performing online apps. "View-source" on them shows low-quality and junk-type JavaScript behind a lot of the most vaunted Web applications. Were real software engineering and software quality to be applied in this domain, we would see a new level of performance, extensibility, and feature richness.
Taking a leadership position would also entail vigorous participation in efforts to improve the platform on which Web-based apps run on. That way, the apps can be easier to use and fit into people's lives much better. Witness Google's sponsorship of Mozilla (for years, the lead Firefox engineer was a Google employee), their new effort with the Chrome Web browser, and their support of the HTML 5 effort. Outfits such as The Web Standards Project and initiatives such as HTML 5 need to be supercharged.
We need more real software engineers representing major companies on the standards committees that define the Web platform, such as the one for JavaScript. JavaScript accounts for a big chunk of what you get on the Web. We don't need folks such as Doug Crockford, who worked for Yahoo, doing secret meetings with Microsoft blocking progress on the Web, even if it's only out of an innocent lack of educational opportunity in software engineering.
Overlooked resources such as Consumer Reports need to be energized to move consumers out of the passive acceptance of the seriously outdated access to the Web afforded by Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 and 7. IE 8 is likely not due out until late 2009, and it may not be a big advance. The Web grassroots should be watered.
In short, Yahoo needs to expand the focus on value to the customer evident in online consumer apps with untold millions of users such as YMail. Yahoo needs to get in there and compete for this massive audience that wants software accessible via a Web browser on any computer. Nobody suggests that the world is likely to have only one automaker. Similarly, we shouldn't assume that Google can be the only successful player in the online consumer app space.
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