Yahoo - The Wal Mart of the internet

[dchapman]

Yahoo has just come out with a new feature on their site: automobile message boards. You can see them here: http://forums.custom.autos.yahoo.com/

Yahoo wants to become the Wal Mart of the internet. They are working to destroy the little guy. How many thousands of webmasters running automobile message boards are going to have their stomach turn when they see this new development?

"But Yahoo drives people to good automobile message boards via their search engine!"

Wrong. (http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=custom+autos&sm=Yahoo%21+Search&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8)

Yahoo is the single busiest site on the internet. Even though their message boards are horrible and laden with ads, they will become well populated. Just like Wal Mart with their sub par quality products has become popular.

Do we really want the internet to be controlled by a few mega corporations? What's next Yahoo? SEO and webmaster message boards?

Scary.

[rex_b]

ugh this is no good

[justtara]

I don't know I think google and yahoo are both right up there with wal-mart. I am worried about google competeting with people like me who sell books through their sites. Everytime I do a search on google I get a link at the bottom asking if I want to search for books on my search terms. I am one of the few people who actually does well with Amazon since people coming to my AD/HD related sites are looking for resources like books.

I guess we always need to keep up on things like these and fouind a to make sure they don't bring smallers sites like ours down.

[HP11]

I honestly believe that search engine competition is just starting and once in full swing, the big three will try to purchase as many sites, services or add as much to their existing services as possible, to try and solidify themselves as the best and most complete.

[danimal]

Yahoo has just come out with a new feature on their site: automobile message boards. You can see them here: http://forums.custom.autos.yahoo.com/.

that forum is butt-ugly, and not very user-friendly to boot.

yahoo groups has been around forever, and there are many serious forums that started out there, but left for greener pastures.

i don't see this new yahoo forum as much of a threat... it's too little too late.

[DevilfruiT]

People tend to be selective about what forums they join and favor (just look at seo), so I don't think a single company like Yahoo could ever monopolize that field. What would worry me more is when search engines start showing their froogle-like lists above the search results whenever someone searches for a product - similar to what livingwithadd mentioned about the books. Not sure if it would be a good business model though.