Why Does Yahoo Suck So Much?

Back when the Internet was born, way back around 1995, centuries ago, I had an AOL account. It was the thing to do. Everyone was on AOL. It was all the rage. I remember reading in the late '90's that AOL was signing up 10,000 customers a day.

Then it went bust and it became totally uncool. I abandoned it and became a Yahoo customer. For a long time, Yahoo was my sole online e-mail account. It was easy to read, it was free and it worked well.

But in the past few years Yahoo seems to be having a mid life performance crisis. It is positively clunky compared to Gmail. It slows down, it has glitches, and it signs you out at unexpected times.

I remember when Yahoo! went public. It was a highly anticipated offering, just as Facebook was recently. The history of Yahoo could be a foreboding prediction of the history of Facebook. I would hope not. Yahoo peaked in December of 1999 at just over 108. This was about three months before the beginning of the decline of the Nasdaq, which at the time was around 5500. Predictions were that it would overtake the Dow in the next couple of years.

But for the past few years, Yahoo stock has been mired in a dusty ditch between $15 and $20. Its five year average return stands at -43%, (that's negative 43 percent.) Despite expanding their offerings, Yahoo has not been able to innovate or appear cool to the perpetually wired generation now growing up. I know we old people don't matter to Internet companies, but an astute observer can easily see that Yahoo is fading faster than we are.

Today was the final straw. Yahoo was down all day and I didn't see an explanation given anywhere. In fact, it was most noticeable that no one noticed. I won't be closing my Yahoo account because I have a lot of contacts associated with it, but my confidence will be forever shaken.

I would say that at a price around $15 it might be a takeover target. But it has nothing to offer to a prospective buyer other than a large database of subscribers. But those same subscribers have by now diversified their Internet presence, just as I have.

I will not be surprised to see Yahoo go the way of the buggy whip in the next few years. The same thing will probably happen to AOL as well. Prepare yourselves for the two minute transition to a new e-mail account