> Yahoo “was kind of this graveyard for cool companies”
Yahoo! actually decent at finding and buying Flickrs and Tumblrs. I'm not sure if they went there to die because Yahoo! didn't know how to grow them further, or because, as cool as they were, there wasn't actually that great of a business in the first place. Maybe being courted by Yahoo! should have been the sign to take the Google deal because Yahoo! being interested in you isn't a good sign.
After acquiring Maktoob, Yahoo! killed dvd4arab, one of the biggest Arabic content forums with over a decade of content, everything from political and sports discussion to poetry to (unfortunately) links to pirated content.
They didn't offer a backup or anything of even the 99% of subforums which were not involved in any piracy related activities. Sad..I still miss the awesome friendly environment that existed there..
Yahoo! actually decent at finding and buying Flickrs and Tumblrs. I'm not sure if they went there to die because Yahoo! didn't know how to grow them further, or because, as cool as they were, there wasn't actually that great of a business in the first place. Maybe being courted by Yahoo! should have been the sign to take the Google deal because Yahoo! being interested in you isn't a good sign.