Just say "No" [to Yahoo Axis]

by cobychapple • 14 years ago

50 26 14 years ago

jacquesm4• 14 years ago

I haven't installed Yahoo! Axis, and I don't like yahoo as a company (especially not after what they did to geocities).

But calling on people to say 'no' to a product for these reasons is a weird move.

If it is crap then say why the product is crap, not that the promotion, the logo or all the other stuff surrounding it are crap. What is wrong with the product?

And if all that is that wrong, by all means, still install it.

See for yourself, evaluate it and say: 'yes, this really is crap', and for these very specific reasons. After all, it's Yahoo, it would be surprising if they suddenly came up with this absolutely great product. But at least install it and evaluate it if you're going to tell people not to use it.

Apropos logos, that red-and-white logo has some interesting associations.

Dramatize• 14 years ago

He's talking about people inside Yahoo saying no.

jacquesm4• 14 years ago

Yes, but now that it has launched it is a bit late for that.

This is addressed to the general public, not to people within yahoo, it suggests to me that someone internal should have said 'no' but did not so now we get to say no without any specific reason why.

dcurtis2• 14 years ago

I am talking about people inside Yahoo who do not have the ability to say "No".

The product is heavily informed by the ancillary activity that goes on to support it, including the marketing materials. It's called execution. You need an arbiter at the end of the chain who can say, "This isn't good enough." Otherwise, you run the risk of doing something poorly, which is embarrassing and damages the overall brand.

Yahoo, in particular, should be treating its brand very delicately right now.

jacquesm4• 14 years ago

I found the ad and the video painful to watch. But I still believe the product should be judged on its merits.

As it is this looks as though you're trying to ride on the media buzz generated by the product launch.

Of course Yahoo needs to work on their processes with respect to product definition and execution. That's the whole reason they're dying in the first place.

The just say "No." appears to be addressed to the readers of your post, and to all of the people at Yahoo! inclusive.

But they already gave the indication that they stand behind their product, after all they launched it. If you're going to make a point why they should have said "No." in the first place then you should stick to specifics about the product. After all, if you've already decided that some of the good stuff from the concept will make it into future browsers you are actually saying it is not all bad. And then maybe you should be specific about those things, both good and bad as well.

That would make it a bit easier to say why people should say "No.". Logos, ads and presentation are not a good reason to say "No." to any product.

primatology• 14 years ago

Sure, but why isn't it good enough? I don't disagree with you, but I'd have liked to hear your reasoning.

jrockway3• 14 years ago

How do you know that Yahoo is not full of projects like this and 99% of them are cancelled early? 99% success is pretty good, and letting 1% get some press for a day or so every other year doesn't seem like the worst thing ever.

Oh sorry, the logo is so intrinsically evil that no true Scotsman would ever allow a product with it to be released. Riiight....

mikeash• 14 years ago

At no point does he call on users to say "no" to Axis. The HN title is deeply misleading.

thunderrabbit• 14 years ago

I just installed Axis add-on to Firefox and my browser instantly slowed to a crawl. I have about 20 tabs open, but still. I removed it and everything is back to top speed again.

mbrzuzy• 14 years ago

I think what irritates me most about Axis is that they had to slap their obnoxious "Yahoo!" logo on it. It just irks me whenever I see it. The way the text is slinky link makes me think of children's toys.

dvhh• 14 years ago

A browser extension for a search engine is so 2000's

mikegirouard• 14 years ago

I'll agree that the title of this probably should have been "Someone should have spoken up a long time ago."

But aside from that, this post showed me the TOS which I had missed earlier. I can't believe something like that slipped past all the people who worked on this.

a3d6g2f7• 14 years ago

The T&C bit made me laugh.

I wonder if they'll fix it in the next 24hrs.

Poor Yahoo.

jrockway3• 14 years ago

I'm really tired of dcurtis' blog. Its objective seems to be to be the first to criticize anything and everything. No insight, no critical thought, just hate.

Yes, this thing is kind of dumb and nobody will use it. But why not relax and let time take its course? By Friday afternoon, everyone will be back to forgetting that there is even a company called Yahoo.

drgath• 14 years ago

> By Friday afternoon, everyone will be back to forgetting that there is even a company called Yahoo.

All 700+ million users?

jrockway3• 14 years ago

699 million of those users are me. Every time I need to log into Flickr, I end up creating a new account because their password rules are something like "must be a dictionary word and your birthdate" and I can't ever remember it.

But seriously, the remark was mostly tongue-in-cheek. Yahoo has a userbase, but their reputation for innovative in-house products is pretty much zero at this point.

Mz• 14 years ago

Yes. Until you said that, I forgot I own several Yahoo Groups and belong to a few more. I belong to only one Google Groups email list and only because it used to be run on some other listserve thingy* until it kind of changed ownership. I am not a paying member, thus I was thinking Yahoo was not relevant to me.

* Technical term, doncha know

newbie12• 14 years ago

Of course, the Axis Powers were Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy. Plus the site name's black and steel lettering has vaguely foreboding, retro-fascist feel. Or maybe it is a Star Wars Imperial vibe. Either way, just saying that is a little unsettling. It isn't a happy brand.

smsm42• 14 years ago

So, you say Apache Axis are secretly fascists? I knew something is wrong with that SOAP thing, just couldn't figure it out... Now I see. Good thing I'm using REST now. There's also a Swedish IT company called Axis Communications, that is very suspicious too. The CEO is probably Emperor Palpatine in disguise.

DigitalSea• 14 years ago

What a coincidence, another baseless Dustin Curtis blog post making it's way to Hacker News once more. I have nothing personally against Mr Curtis, but this post just topped the "Twitter is watching everything you do" post Dustin published a week ago. Is Dustin just sitting at his computer waiting for people to screw up like Yahoo! so he can publicly vilify them?

Looks like Yahoo! is still the poster child for hate, only second to the PHP language of course. Fair enough Yahoo! Axis is a crappy product and perhaps someone should have said something, it's easier said than done. It takes a lot of failed products to release something good, Google are a prime example of this, look how many failed products they've released people should have internally said no to; Google Answers, Google Wave, Google Notebook, Google Buzz... Just to name a few.

It's a very common thing for an Internet company like Yahoo! knee deep in bureaucracy to release crappy products, and it appears as though it is a very common thing to hate on Yahoo!

reason• 14 years ago

Looks like someone's trying to get another corporate employee fired through criticism and a lack of practical advice.

jscn• 14 years ago

Not only does the logo look like Adobe's, it also looks suspiciously like AXIS Jiu Jitsu's logo (see http://www.axisjj.com/ -- take the central triangle, rotate it left and mirror it on the y-axis.)

Just say "No" [to Yahoo Axis]

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