Jeremy Zawodny has a brave, honest and heartfelt post which reminds me why many don’t want to work for companies like Yahoo. Corporate politics can drag down progress. Jeremy used to work in the Y! Finance department of Yahoo and writes:

It makes me sad because virtually all of the new/innovative/cool features in Google Finance are things we talked about YEARS ago. Many of them I’d lobbied for repeatedly. Some were even prototyped.

* A ticker search that doesn’t suck.
* Charts with overlays for news events.
* Blog integration.
* Featuring discussions more prominently.
* RSS support.

Who’s gonna get “credit” for all that now?

My problem with Y! Finance — and Yahoo in general, frankly — isn’t only what Jeremy describes, but the level of ad saturation. Compare that to Google Finance with no ads and there’s a big difference in usability. This is why I so quickly wrote that I was switching from Y! Finance to Google Finance. A decision for me based purely on asthetics and overall page value. Let’s face it that two competing services with virtually the same features and one has six ads and the other has zero ads, which is better?

I’m not saying Y! shouldn’t make money, I think they should so they can stay in business (disclaimer: I own their stock), but can’t they at least use their own less intrusive YPN? One or two graphic ads might be better than six — *six* — of them.

If people are going to point to finance pages, why should they point to pages like this?

This is where Google is coming in and kicking the ass of their competition. It’s a battlefield march that won with Gmail vs. Hotmail and will win here.

With that said, Google (disclaimer: I own their stock too) still should have rolled in with at least one ad. It’s hurting them when they don’t launch with advertising — and they will eventually — people will call them a sellout and consider switching back to their competitors. If they had started with Adsense ads running, they would have been better positioned as an ad-supported venture. Instead, they continue to get stuff out there and worry about monetization later.

No business plan is sound without worrying at least a little bit about monetization in the now, instead of the future. One could argue that it was always that way for Google search too, but I believe early on they realized they needed to monetize their search somehow or it was game over. And one could make the argument now that Google’s business isn’t search, it’s advertising.

How can Y! Finance compete?
Y! Finance isn’t done by any stretch. They should take advantage of their established position (I’m in the minority switching to Google Finance, I’m certain) by advertising their own YPN ads, removing at least half of the button ads. They need to play catchup on the features and add some del.icio.us/MyWeb/Flickr interaction into the finance section.

The big question is whether or not upper management will get pissed at guys like Jeremy Zawodny telling it how it is and move him out in favor of more yuppie bone smuggler corporate clowns or get busy updating their properties with competing features and technology.

Somebody please tell me if/when the bozo migration begins so I can sell my YHOO stock post haste. In 2005 they were happening, but in 2006 they are becoming what happened to them?

Did this post make you go hmm?

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