I am a Yahoo! holdout. I have been using MyYahoo as a source of news feeds (RSS) for years — over a decade, I believe. It was easy, comfortable, and their news site was (and still is) extremely user friendly. I often preferred Yahoo Sports to ESPN or SI. It was even my home page for a while, before having one home page became obsolete — now I have multiple home pages, and it’s not one of them.
However, they are losing me. They are losing me because of video. I can’t watch video via Yahoo, and video, if they haven’t heard, is important these days. But Yahoo has decided to boycott me when I am not in the United States. I’m usually not in the U.S., so that’s quite often.
I am not alone. Many Americans (I hear) travel, and if Yahoo News was a news source at home when they’re travelling, they will have to forgo the video. It’s a good thing Yahoo isn’t an important player out there anymore. I guess we can now see why.
Yahoo decided to block anyone outside the U.S. from viewing video. I’m not talking about commercial TV, I’m talking about news clips. You see they use Hulu. Hulu just makes me angry because of that insane policy, and I am looking forward to the day they disappear. Now it’s Yahoo’s turn to piss me off.
Alienation of certain markets is usually not a good business strategy, particularly for a global Internet player struggling to survive. Someone should explain the reasoning behind this policy. Maybe once they do, I’ll get it and come back. For now, I may have to use iGoogle. Ugh.