With Jerry Yang’s recent departure as CEO, Yahoo is restructuring and refocusing, and that means Yahoo’s past schizophrenic approach to new products are being pared down by the new head honcho, Carol Bartz. One of those recent casualties, according to Valleywag? A Yahoo Phone.
According to their “source,” Bartz was instantly scornful of Yahoo’s attempt to ship its own branded cell phone: a branded Motorola pre-loaded with “Yahoo services.” So she sicced her teenage daughter on the phone, who apathetically belched and turned back to her old handset within moments. Thus, the phone was canned.
I don’t get it. One thing that came out of CES is the Yahoo Widgets team is going balls out trying to get widget support in all the upcoming HDTVs. Yahoo clearly sees this as a good future for the business, bringing Internet functionality in easy-to-understand software gadgets to connected, non-PC hardware. The Motorola team-up seems to be talking about widget support with their discussion of a phone “preloaded with Yahoo services.” So why is widgetizing a bad strategy when applied to a phone? Theoretically, Yahoo Widgets support could live on numerous OSes. Without funding a full OS, it seems like a smart way to sneak Yahoo onto as many devices as possible.
Then again, its Valleywag, whose sources are overcredulously culled from the half-paralyzed, silvery-snooted mugs of Silicon Valley inhalant enthusiasts. So grain of salt.
Carol Bartz turns to daughter for Yahoo Phone Research [Valleywag]
Can a Yahoo Yahoo phone did?
A Yahoo can Yahoo did phone?
If they did, I’d leave it alone.
0 ^ 0
Then again, its Valleywag
‘Nuff said. They’re the ones that were flogging the V**l*t Bl** vs. Boing Boing story for all it was worth, and then some.
An open letter to Bartz from Nilofer Merchant and her team at Rubicon (some of the smartest people in the Valley)- http://tinyurl.com/d64x76
Nilofer worked for Carol at Autodesk….knows what she’s talking about.
Yahoo Widgets team going balls out for support? The Widget Developer Forums have been a veritable ghost town for so long, many good people on the team have been laid off, changed positions or left. If you’re a developer and you update a widget, I believe it takes DAYS for the “team” to post it now. It’s sad, really, Yahoo had a good thing going, a good platform across multiple OSes and they’ve seemingly pulled the budget and left it to die a horrible death. I *wanted* to get excited to finally update my widget, but no one’s watching or caring anymore. Adobe Air? No thanks, at least not yet. I’m trying to cut back on my widget engine intake.
Japan has a pretty strong hold on the Japanese cell phone market in terms of a lot of their data service related apps. I just spent the fall abroad there and my cell phone had an actual yahoo *button*, to bring up the associated features. The browser, search engine, several of the onscreen displays all showed a clear affiliation with Yahoo Japan.