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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 28 2014, @02:02AM
I use it everyday. I use it mostly for myyahoo, its rss feeds, and stock summaries. However, I was surprised they still had the directory. Google is way better.
I remember using it a *LOT* when there was some online web game with trivia and trying to find some icon on dozens of websites out there.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday September 28 2014, @02:31AM
Yeah, the stock summaries are the most useful I've seen. Okay, I haven't looked a lot, but no other I've tried has been worth making an account.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.