Yahoo's Extreme Makeover
It's easy, in comparison with Microsoft and Google, to dismiss Yahoo. After all, the original idea of the company, a handcrafted directory of the Web, seems quaint today.
But the directory is only one aspect of Yahoo today. Yahoo is big in social bookmarking with del.icio.us, is in the blog space with Blo.gs, has major weight in the photo-sharing world with Flickr, and has a finger in just about every other web service, including maps, mail, messaging, music, movies, and mobile services, to sample just one letter of the alphabet. Particularly important for developers is Yahoo Developer Network, launched with the acquisition of Konfabulator, now known as "Yahoo's Widget Engine."
And they have hired Larry Tesler. Tesler was one of the people responsible for the revolutionary work on user interface at Xerox PARC in the '70s, and went on to refine his vision of user-experience design at Apple and Amazon. So far his efforts seem to be focused on giving the home page a facelift, but he's come to Yahoo to do more than that. Designing the user experience—rather than merely the user interface—gets beneath the skin and right down to the muscle of the software. It'll be interesting to see what Tesler does for Yahoo once he really rolls up his sleeves.
Also interestingly, Yahoo seems to have decided that to meet the challenge of Google, it has to open up to developers more than Google is willing to do. At Yahoo Developer Network you can learn about the Messenger Plug-ins SDK, Search APIs, Maps AJAX and Flash APIs, a Design Patterns Library, and user interface tools. There's the PHP Developer Center for working with Yahoo Web Services, Yahoo Widgets, and plug-ins for Flickr and Yahoo Music Engine.
Survivor
Staying afloat in the world that Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo are trying to create isn't that tricky. Study the published APIs, read about their plans and take them with a grain of salt, and don't lose sight of your own goals and strengths. That's pretty much all you can do.
Or, in defiance of everything said here, you can simply ignore these titans. That's a strategy, too. Design crowd-sourced software at Cambrian House, for example. Despite the defensive tone of this article, the world of software development is more open today than it has been for years. Inform yourself about the risks, yes, but then go forth and create.
DDJ
