Imagine how different the world might be today if yahoo had bought google and tanked the fuck out of it. The whole modern web would be different. Perhaps the social media era would have never come to pass.
Microsoft isnt well known for their innovative products, they usually reiterate on the same concepts. Every time they try something different they fuck up big time, hence the old windows meme of every second release being bullshit like win ME or win8, and now win 11.
I think if they had tried a similar product without google to emulate it wouldn't have been such a world changing tool that is essentially the operating system of the internet for most users.
We wouldn't even really have the web ecosystem and capable browsers if Microsoft had their way. They pretty much created IE to try to stop web apps from happening.
If not them, then someone else would have taken the mantle. Judgment Day always arrives, WWIII/Eugenics Wars will still happen... it just gets delayed in some timelines.
This is actually the good timeline. People hate google for their unsavory shit nowadays, BUT!
They actually had a very positive and important role in advancement of open source and open platforms. Chrome itself became dominant because at the time it was better.
Without google we would have an even worse situation
I still use Yahoo Mail. They offer disposable addresses with a suffix you can choose. I like it better than putting extra characters in Gmail addresses, because you can actually delete those Yahoo addresses.
Yahoo Japan is also a Y! fork that's still doing well.
I have three yahoo email accounts I still use, the oldest from about 1997 and surprisingly, the spam folder on that one rarely gets anything. (The other two are leftovers from when you had to get a yahoo account to make a geocities site). I really like the disposable addresses. Luckily I signed up back when you could have 10 on one of them. Then they ditched it for free users, but brought it back with the three limit. But I got to keep my 10.
Excite was my jam though. I was sad when I lost my excite accounts.
Yeah, it depends on when you registered. I have more as well. I think you get a lot more in the paid "Pro" version.
Mark my words: I think it’s making a bit of a comeback given Google’s enshittification. They’ve also been acquiring ISP email services and showing other signs of growth. I wouldn’t be surprised if it re-appears as an IPO in the next few years.
All search engines suffer from enshittification because the web at large does. Switching search engines won't help escape it, Google's results are getting worse because the internet as a whole is. Bing's and DuckDuckGo's results are just as bad. And unless someone comes up with a reliable way of filtering AI generated SEO crap from searches, it's only going to get worse.
I learned about them from* a print out at my library while using their computers (that I booked in hour increments).
I had that experience quite a while ago.
6yo me: Its basically chocolate milk! What’s not to like?😋
16yo me: This tastes like chocolate flavored water 🥴
When I was a little kid around 1990 you could book computer time at our very small local library. I would walk across town by myself. The computer was an apple IIe with a green monochrome monitor. You could play Oregon trail and a handful of other educational titles.
To be fair, they never said it was a new computer, just a computer. The things were incredibly expensive at the time.
I almost forgot about Yahoo, as they lost relevance in my after the cybersecurity issues they were experiencing during Yahoo’s heyday.
I ducked it yesterday when I was trying to find a usable search engine that isn't just a Google or Bing frontend. Sadly, Yahoo is now Being.
Personally I tried kagi for a while and their results are quite good, but in practice with searxng I find most things I am looking for as well, and it is not a commercial product. And if need be kagi offers 100 free searches per account.
searx.be, it was the preset for searxng in my librewolf Installation. So far i have no complaints
I couldn't tell you how long it's been since I used Yahoo! to search for anything, but it looks like it's still around! I still have an old yahoo mail account I use just because I've used it for so long lol
Sad thing, I still have a Yahoo account. Had that before GMail was even a thing.
No I don't use it anymore LOL, I tend to forget I even have it.
