And I think the key word there is simplistic. I won’t criticize Yahoo users, well I will but to nobody in this thread, but it is just a completely different mindset.
I fly around to different web pages all day long. I don’t understand the concept of the middle-man also known as the portal. It makes no sense to me. If I want weather, I go to my favorite weather website directly. If I want banking, I just go there. I have lots of e-mail accounts all over the place. www.stumbleupon.com is spectacular for doing old school surfing in your areas of interest.
Google does the hard searches. I go wherever I go regularly directly. It is very simple really. I have never understood the Yahoo business model but that is apparently a failing of me because loads of people seem to get use out of it.
I’ve always used Yahoo! for my home page. For the most part it’s non-offense, is low bandwidth, has no pop-ups, and provides basic information (news, weather, maps, etc.).
Now that we have Google, it’s easy to forget just what Yahoo did. Yahoo brought some sense to the web. The idea of just “knowing” the location of every site you enjoy going to was ridiculous. Nobody knew, because nobody had really visited them yet.
Yahoo collected all of the best links into categories that people could actually search. Remember, before Google, “search” technology didn’t really exist. Search engines just pulled up random sites that featured your keywords somewhere in the text. Matching keywords to good sites was what the Yahoo directory did.
And then they grew out. They added an email system that to this day has never been topped (that’s right, Gmail is second rate compared to Yahoo Mail). Yahoo Maps became the go-to mapfinder. Yahoo Games (and Fantasy Sports) are still one of the best time wasters on the web. Yahoo Music is just plain awesome.
But Google topped them in search, and that’s all anybody talks about.
I like finance.yahoo.com because it seems to give me the information I want while not playing any cutesy tricks with javascript (other than periodically updating stock values & charts, which I want). For some reason the other sites that I’ve used, including my two on-line brokers, seem to load slowly and group the information inefficiently. They also seem to do a good job of linking to current news items related to whichever stocks I’m watching.
Similarly, my current obsession is looking for real estate (know anyone who’s selling a house?) The idle browsing through yahoo’s MLS entries & foreclosures seems a little quicker, and they automatically include a map showing each home’s location. Zillow and Trulia give similar capabilities, but Zillow requires too many clicks for what I want, and Zillow pages seem to have the feature that anything I click sends me to a page wanting me to buy their real estate search service. Yahoo gives it up easier and clearer.
I use a couple of yahoo mail accounts, but all other free services are probably just as capable, so that’s just inertia on my part. Google’s way more capable, but I haven’t quite figured out how to harness its powers.
While the Yahoo spam filter is better than the Barracuda filter at work, I wouldn’t call it “outstandingly good.” I almost never met my wife because the first e-mail she sent me to my Yahoo address (after having met in real life) ended up in the spam filter. I find Gmail’s spam filer to be significantly better.
I still check the Yahoo mail account once a month or so, but it seems everyone I know got the message that my gmail account is my main account. Other than that, I haven’t accessed the Yahoo web site in at least a year.l
I haven’t been on Yahoo! in years. Just visited now due to this thread and wasn’t impressed with the mess of information. I’m sure some people love it but I prefer the stark Google page.
Like Justin_Bailey says, many (if not most) people like Yahoo for reasons other than being a search engine. I like Google for searching, don’t get me wrong, and I’m actually mad that Google is trying to become like Yahoo! homepage. I like and use the other Yahoo! services (mail, maps, music, games, etc.). I haven’t use it as a search engine in years.
Occasionally, I may read the news that are linked to in the main page. BTW, I use the Spanish version of Yahoo.
No it doesn’t. Unless you have something that clears your cookies between every page, it shouldn’t be doing that. When I search for something through Google, I click on images and the search that was just there is what comes up on images.
We started off with AOL and I thought we were stuck with what they offered, as if it was AOL or the internet, but not both. I was gobsmacked when I found that I could take a URL from a magazine and type it straight into Internet Explorer and view the page that way.
I took a look at the Yahoo page again, it seems like a nice idea, but I’d much rather have a few specific sites in my favourites for email news etc that I’ve chosen myself. Aside from that, most recommendations come from magazines and the users of this and other message boards.
I still use yahoo as a search engine (and my home page). I like it becuase it gives basically the same results as google, and there’s a little bit of news on the main page. When I’m just staring at my computer all day, it’s nice to have a few headlines to read when I’m searching for something.
Yesterday I downloaded a form package, and the mail giving the link was the first false positive I’ve gotten in six months. Very, very little spam gets through, maybe a few a week. That’s outstanding in my book.
Considering that some of us don’t have a long enough lunch break to surf to many different sites, Yahoo’s start page is a good way to condense lots of information into one place for easier viewing.
I use both Yahoo! and Google. I use Google mostly for generic searches only. Yahoo I use fro News, Fantasy sports, yellow pages, some email, finance and maps.
Loyal Yahooist here… I’ve used Yahoo Mail since being on the web, Yahoo Messenger is constantly on, Yahoo Fantasy Sports remains far and away the best free fantasy sports site on the web, and Yahoo Finance meets my needs pretty well. Yahoo Sports is a decent portal to sports news as well.
I’ve played around a little with My Yahoo, but I don’t use it much.
I don’t have it as my home page (I use about:blank) but it’s probably my most visited domain (well, either that or here).
I use Google for two things - search and maps. I used to prefer Yahoo’s maps, but lately I’ve been using Google’s more.
I tried to like gmail, really I did - but I’ve pretty much given up on it. I never could get used to its whole feel. Plus the link between Yahoo Messenger and Mail is a big bonus.
I still have nightmares about the two days a few years ago that my Yahoo account got locked out… ::shudder::