The fall of Yahoo China: There is no much value

China Yahoo Mail will stop service on August 19

In the fast-changing network of rivers and lakes, want to maintain "charm" is a very difficult thing, fleeting public attention, so that every product team are placed in the situation of rowing against the tide. Many times, only when the "Stop" News is published in the form of news, people will suddenly experience the cruelty of the law of the jungle, send or regret or indignation sigh. No one cares when they live, but when they die they become hot again, and the reality always mocks the losers in the market competition.

However, birth and death, the end is a pity, the exhaustion of the internet ancestors like a mirror, but also reflected the old users. MSN, Google Reader, China Blog network, Baidu ... To the Chinese Yahoo Mail. Related news, there is a comment is particularly sad: "A few years ago, I gave my secret love of the goddess Yahoo Mail sent a 10 years later to receive the time capsule, this can not receive, or good." ”

Rumors of conspiracy theorists have again been rife. Earlier this year, it was rumored that Alibaba Group will "return" to Yahoo in China in May 2013, the Chinese Yahoo team will be scattered to Alibaba's project group. Although the news was later denied by Alibaba official, but the Chinese Yahoo Mail stop service, and guide all users to migrate to the Aliyun mailbox of the latest action, still unavoidably let people Lenovo Alibaba is "Xiemoshalv".

We may as well go to the flower, back to the beginning of the story, to relive the rise and fall of China's Yahoo, and China's first generation of the internet left traces.

Yahoo, Yahoo! by Taiwanese-American immigrants Jerry Yang and his university classmate David Filo, was the first wave of the internet to become one of the fastest-growing Wall Street companies in 20th century, and opened the Internet portal model.

1999, Yahoo entered the Chinese market, at that time, all of China did not have many sites in the background, quickly become the main internet users of China's ranks. But because, like all American internet companies, Jerry Yang and his Yahoo are not accustomed to the barbaric growth of the Chinese local Internet environment, Sina, NetEase are up and comer beyond.

This time, Hubei people Zhou 祎 entered the vision of Yahoo, he put a business plug-in called "3721 Internet assistants" to almost all Chinese Internet users ' IE browsers and sold 200 million of sales in a year with rough, simple window ads, and Yahoo thinks it can tame the role and make it work for himself. Lead Yahoo to adapt to China's local characteristics as soon as possible. In 2003, Yahoo took out 120 million of dollars, ostensibly to acquire 3721, is actually bought Zhou this person, gave the position of the President of the Chinese region let him inspire Yahoo bloody.

Later things proved that this is a dual-lose business, the United States headquarters that Zhou use Yahoo to do their own resources and projects, while Zhou repeatedly to the media said regret to the heyday of the 3721 sold to Yahoo. Zhou left Yahoo China in 2005.

In the future, Yahoo entered the era of Alibaba, Mr Ma, who has a good personal relationship with him, simply sold Yahoo China to Alibaba at the end of 2005, selling it more like a barter deal: Yahoo took out Yahoo China plus 1 billion of dollars in cash in exchange for a 40% stake in Alibaba. To emphasize the background of the time, Yahoo in the United States was squeezed by Google, no time to take into account the Chinese market, and Alibaba also want to get a traditional portal to the E-commerce platform yell, so the deal at that time seems to have a little "a perfect match" feeling.

However, Alibaba's main business is, after all, E-commerce platform, Yahoo China to the hands of Ma Yun (renamed as China's Yahoo), has become a discipline of the senior management of an experimental plot, and constantly be transformed, remodeling, transformation, to adapt to the process of Alibaba's electric business. One of the 18 Arhat Jin Jianhang, vice president Zeng and even outsiders Xie have done the Chinese Yahoo, Yahoo's face from the portal to search, to Word-of-mouth network, and then to life service platform, its value has been constantly shrinking. September 2012, Alibaba paid 7.6 billion U.S. dollars, Yahoo was in exchange for Alibaba shares recovered, for Ma Yun, Alibaba did a serious loss of business, and Jerry Yang, China Yahoo was thoroughly played waste, is still the outcome of a double loss.

Tossing and tossing, China Yahoo's mailbox service, has always remained stable, which is its only associated with the United States Yahoo Business, until April 18, 2013. Compared with the current focus of social networking, group buying and mobile Internet, e-mail is a "veteran" Network application, with e-mail products not only standard for large internet companies, but also the only identification tool for users--almost 99% when registering new accounts on any Web site will require users to fill out an email address, used to confirm his ID, "email", "OICQ", "Internet chat room" and so made up the first generation of Chinese netizens on the Internet awareness.

But with the advent of the era of internet pluralism, China Yahoo Mail products lack of imagination of the disadvantage of the space gradually manifested-in addition to send and receive mail, it can not win more time for users, but also to China's relevant departments to provide user privacy information and eventually lead to adverse consequences of the practice, but also to China's Yahoo mailbox user volume plummeted. In the competition with rivals, Yahoo also fell downwind, outside of the loss of Gmail and Hotmail, in China to the loss of NetEase and Tencent, China and the United States Yahoo to the mailbox products produced the same disappointment.

September 2007, China Yahoo launched the domain name for @yahoo.cn "Lifetime Mailbox" service, committed to all e-mails will be permanently saved

Quite black humor is that China Yahoo in 2007 launched a "Lifetime Mailbox" service-you now search "Yahoo + lifetime Mailbox" keyword, I can still see the news release from Yahoo, China: "We think that the so-called lifetime mailbox, at least to meet the four standards, that is, unlimited capacity of space, personalized ID, Safe and reliable quality, trustworthy brand. Only all meet these four aspects, can truly realize let the user peace of mind, never delete the letter, collection life mail and story wishes. Yahoo is not a lifetime mailbox when a product to operate, we want to build is the user can one-woman, together through life partners. "It also serves as a wake-up call for ordinary Internet users: Never trust an internet business as a lifelong, permanent commitment because they can't live forever."

At the end of last year, South Korea's Yahoo shut down its 15-year-long mailbox service in South Korea because of the appalling user activity. Since 2011, the size of personal e-mail users in China has also begun the trend of negative growth (digital Source: Eric Consulting 2011-2012 China personal e-mail industry annual monitoring Report), mailbox social attributes by micro-Bo and other emerging platforms to carve up, once again reducing the user's use of stickiness, This is a global phenomenon. And Google, Tencent and other enterprises in the operation of e-mail products, are doing "integration" movement, that is----the mailbox as a part of the product matrix to get through each other, providing a one-stop service, such as Gmail users can be in the Gmail window directly using search, Google drive storage, Services such as Google + social networking and the calendar calendar are "Appreciating" the functional references that mailboxes can implement. But Yahoo, especially China Yahoo, is not the "integration" drivers, you can hardly imagine Alibaba will open Taobao data to China Yahoo, when Gtalk and Gmail deep embedding, you can not see the Chinese Yahoo Mailbox and Ali can sync communication.

Alibaba has a total of 12 companies, namely: Alibaba Business-to-business, Taobao, Cat, Alipay, Word-of-mouth Network, Aliyun, China Yahoo, a Amoy network, China million net, a good deal, CNZZ, a tatsu. Among them, in addition to China Yahoo, the other 11 subsidiaries are not Alibaba's own son, is a wholly-owned adopted children, only the Chinese Yahoo is a stepson identity, and the need to sign a contract with the United States to obtain operational qualifications, this pattern also makes Alibaba can not be invested in China Yahoo. Until closed today, China's Yahoo mailbox still can only support the largest 25M attachment transmission, compared with the number of competitors to G-meter "oversized accessories", only to say that China Yahoo's mailbox products have not received any attention.

Whether it's Mr Ma or his successor, Lu knows that Yahoo's brand has not had much value today, and that the rhetoric of "China Yahoo will be listed separately" has become a fleeting matter. Now, as far as possible to divest China's Yahoo intangible assets (copy yahoo search for Aliyun search), and as soon as possible to get rid of the cost of Chinese Yahoo, the Chinese Yahoo album in 2009, closed in 2013, the Chinese Yahoo mailbox, is the server storage resources consumer products, may be wise.

And China Yahoo, will continue to be led to the edge of the corner, until only an empty shell, perhaps Lu will be thrown back to the US Yahoo. For Mr Ma and Jerry Yang, this and the original cooperation when the expectation, the gap is too far. However, Ma Yun retired, Jerry Yang also had not done in Yahoo, the back of the matter, continue to give back to the people to solve it on their own.