Not Much to ‘Yahoo’ About Recently

Published February 26, 2008

By Charles Winkleman

The news has recently been dominated by Google and Microsoft duking it out to see who can be the strongest, most popular kid on the playground. While these two giants have been kicking sand in each other’s faces, Yahoo! has been caught in the crossfire. And while normally I could care less about multi-billion dollar corporations, as a Yahoo! mail customer I’d like to know that Yahoo! can keep me pleased in all my Internet, mail, and searching needs. And to anyone else who doesn’t have a Yahoo! account, a website is only as good as its homepage. And when looking at Yahoo!’s homepage, there is a lot left to be desired.
Now I’m not talking about the layout, because I know jack about that. What interests me is the news that Yahoo! puts onto its homepage. But to call it news would be a disgrace to the already disgraced news media. With such headlines as “Ten Ways to Get Your Boyfriend in Bed” and “8 Reasons Women Don’t Lose Weight,” there are great attention grabbers.

One of my favorite articles was entitled “Be Irresistible for Valentine’s Day.” Now I was hoping this was more than just a bawdy sex-ed article, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn I was right. Valentine’s Day was certainly the perfect time to spice up my life, so I read on with a passion. Here are a few select ways to increase my irresistibility.

1) Add a Dash of Mystery- “Jackie drove Jack Kennedy wild with that mysterious agenda of hers.” And then JFK cheated on Jackie with Marilyn Monroe. And I’m pretty sure since Jackie didn’t know about it, Johnny was really being the mysterious one. Touché.

2) Channel a Little Marilyn- “There’s nothing wrong with the tasteful display of a little skin.” Especially when your skin is helping the aforementioned John Kennedy cheat on his ‘mysterious’ wife.

3) Find Your Signature Scent- “Coco invented Chanel No. 5 to evoke ‘eternal woman,’ and sales went through the roof when Marilyn Monroe confessed it was all she ever wore to bed. Choose a scent that spins your irresistible legend faithfully.” I hope I don’t wear this out as thin as this writer did, but I’m pretty sure Marilyn and Johnny got their irresistible legend on UNFAITHFULLY.

So maybe Yahoo! got their opinions and hopes of Valentine’s Day a little screwed up, but I tried to believe they were just so giddy with joy and too busy changing the Yahoo! icon to better resemble Valentine’s Day that they didn’t have time to edit the news articles. But that’s no reason to hate them, right?

Maybe I could hate them for all of their pointless articles and videos about kittens being scared or babies looking funny. I was under the impression that Youtube existed for that very reason. But not being one to question the media establishment, I asked my old friend Webster for advice. He said that news is defined as “a report of recent events, previously unknown information, or something having a specified influence or effect.” Well the video of the cute kitten did make me hate Yahoo!, and it is a pretty specific effect, so I suppose I was proven wrong. But regardless.

Although my business and legal knowledge is not too profound, if Yahoo! won’t sell themselves to the devil, they should at least shake things up a little bit within their management. Because even if Yahoo! may be fighting to own the market on viral internet videos, they should spend more time keeping the sparse users they have left. Anyone can provide free unlimited e-mail, even a crummy start-up like Google.

Anyone remember those ‘Yahoooooooooligan!’ commercials? Those were the days.

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