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from the do-you-know-anyone-who-uses-it? dept.
As part of an ongoing effort to streamline and focus its business, Yahoo today announced ( http://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/98474044364/progress-report-continued-product-focus ) that it was retiring its namesake product at the end of the year.
In January 1994, Jerry Yang and David Filo, graduate students at Stanford University, created a hierarchical directory of websites, "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web." In March of that year, they gave it the name "Yahoo!," for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle."
In the early days of the Web, these categorized, human-curated Web listings were all the rage. Search engines existed, but rapidly became notorious for their poor result quality. On a Web that was substantially smaller than the one we enjoy today, directories were a useful alternative way of finding sites of interest.
(Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Saturday September 27 2014, @08:34PM
Sigh, I distinctly recall submitting web addresses to Yahoo back in the day when it was THE place to go.
And I still think that actual human curation will always beat algorithms for trustworthiness.
Sadly Yahoo just got crushed by the juggernaut that was AltaVista.