Remember when Yahoo, not Google, was the top search engine? Remember that list of topics, and the number in parenthesis telling you how many websites Yahoo had about that topic? That was the Yahoo Directory. And now we say goodbye, Yahoo Directory.
And let’s just say that this goodbye in unceremonious. In one paragraph, they explained how Yahoo Directory helped users explore the Internet, but it was time to change with the times, and this service will be ending in December 2014. Yahoo Directory was founded in 1994, the same year Yahoo was. In fact, Yahoo is an acronym for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Order-then exclamation point. For years, Yahoo Directory was the premier search engine site. But in the 1990s, search engines were in their infancy. Back then, all a good search engine needed was generic terms that can help you find broad information was acceptable, and for the times, remarkable. This directory required human laborers to review, summarize, and categorize the websites. And believe it or not, this was a winning formula for several years.
But by the early 2000s, Google had revolutionized the Internet as a whole and the search engine game. They processed search results by automation. And unlike Yahoo, Google didn’t have a long list with a number beside it, meaning you’d have to go through pages and information you don’t want. Suddenly, all you did was type in a specific keyword and it brought you to a specific website. This worked so well that by 2003, Google surpassed Yahoo and never looked back. And in December 2014, Yahoo Directory will close it’s doors forever. It’s been dying a slow death. Directory may be fun if you just want to browse and browse through all kinds of subjects. But in 2014, who has time for that anymore? The real question is, what took Yahoo Directory so long to die?