Yahoo! has been quietly snapping up one blog business after another. This time del.icio.us get's gobbled up by the juggernaut. Some feel that Yahoo! gets tagging... (or blogging), but even if they do - I've had big gripe with Yahoo!'s services for a long time. [Disclaimer: I have a Yahoo! account to monitor their progress - it used to be my primary account before MSN, .MAC and now Gmail.] Over time other mail services blew by them like they were standing still, search was never their strong suit (they were a people-run directory of sites) and of all the IM clients though... Yahoo! IM is looking the best lately. But it just kills me that they have so many HUGE advert banners in their mail service - EVEN WHEN YOU ARE PAYING. Bah-humbug!
But I digress... Yahoo! has snatched up Inktomi (search), WhereOnEarth (wifi location finder), Upcoming.org (online event planning and social networking), blo.gs (blog tracking), Overture (ad service + search), as well as DialPad (VOIP), Musicmatch (music), Konfabulator (widgets), Flickr! (photo sharing). Now they've bought del.icio.us (social bookmarking). All of these will presumably fit under the Y!360 (hello? can you say XBOX 360?) service umbrella.
One interesting note: I have a feeling blogger.com was hotly contested between Google & Yahoo! - and Google won. Y!'s recently launched 360 service has a blog service built on Overture... but I bet that was option two behind buying blogger.com.
So what's next? I'm betting on digg.com or Frappr!
posted @ Sunday, December 11, 2005 6:31 AM