Yahoo relaunches with streamlined look. The Internet portal introduces a new home page that sports a cleaner layout with more potential real estate for advertisers. [CNET News.com]
The problem with Yahoo, is that usability is contrary to their business model. Think about shopping, entertainment, news, and so on. They have links to their own shopping, entertainment, news, and so on on the main page. For good usability, those pages would be listed under their directory -- that is, you would click on Business & Economy, then on Shopping, then on a link to another subpage of the directory, and so on. That's how the old Yahoo used to work. Alas, Yahoo can't be a good directory and have its own web properties such as shopping, otherwise the directory would make it too easy for users to find Yahoo's competitors. Therefore, Yahoo can never be a good directory. Q.E.D.
What's needed, is a company that has only a directory, thereby staying impartial to the directory content. I wonder if such a company could make money by licensing its directory to ISPs.
Posted by Doug Sauder at July 2, 2002 10:56 PM