Look, I love Yahoo. Hell, I love em all – from AOL to Microsoft and all the G’s in between. Otherwise, what’s the f’ing point of spending so much time thinking about them?
But let’s be honest. Yahoo, like every other company I love, has not totally embraced open, any more than its competitors have. In other words, Yahoo and its kin have a complicated relationship with open. It’s the classic question: can we make enough money from being open to justify the money we might lose? (Bizweek story)
Could Yahoo do what Facebook is doing – allow anyone to build an app where *all the money stays with the developer*?
Um. No. That’s really open. And that ain’t happening. Any more than AT&T is going to let you build apps on its mobile network without a vig.
Two years ago I was invited to give a talk to Murdoch’s senior executive team on the theme of the Internet. I suggested that the company take all the video IP it owned, and set it free – open it up, in other words.
I still think the first to do this – and CBS EVP Patrick Keane, a former Googler, said his company was totally open to that at the CM Summit this week – will win.
But true openess ain’t this:
Yahoo brass say they are now taking openness to the next level. For example, the test version of the new My Yahoo lets users link to Google’s (GOOG) e-mail service, Gmail. It also includes widgets—known in Yahoo-speak as “modules”—from partners such as Netflix (NFLX) and The New York Times (NYT) that let users choose to see movies and read stories from their customized homepages.
It’s just not. Sorry. Don’t be half pregnant. Bet the company, Yahoo. What the hell!