• WesternInfidels@feddit.online
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    6 hours ago

    And that’s why I say [Mayer] ran it into the ground- because when Google demonstrated a MUCH MUCH MUCH better Search, Yahoo didn’t do anything differently.

    Look, this sentence literally blames Mayer for things that happened before her tenure. You acknowledge that this doesn’t make any sense, but you can’t really deny that it’s what you’ve said. Somehow the media that’s covered Mayer has made a lot of people react this way.

    Flickr is one that comes to mind. Google had Picasa…

    As a response to its community’s concerns, Flickr saw a substantial engineering investment from 2014-2015 or so, under Mayer’s tenure. I’m afraid the best summary I’ve found is pretty obvious AI slop, but it’s relating some real events.

    Flickr lives, Picasa was killed, Google Photos is now an extremely annoying nagware for backup services. Things could be so much worse for Flickr.

    Yahoo Answers was another one…

    God I hated Yahoo Answers.

    Mayer’s attempts to make Yahoo relevant again may not have worked but it’s not responsible or accurate to conclude that she was necessarily inept.

    It is my suspicion that if, say, Jack Dorsey had overseen the dismantling of Yahoo, the business press would have told us that he made a great effort but Yahoo’s problems went too deep. Rather than leading us to believe that he was just inept. Or that he failed because he took the wrong amount of paternity leave.