What’s Left of Yahoo Innovation or Why I Left del.icio.us for Ma.gnolia

Watching the Yahoo layoffs on Tuesday as news of who was out hit Twitter and blogs was depressing, to say the least. But the biggest surprise, at least for me, was what appeared to be a decimation of Brickhouse, with Bradley Horowitz, head of Yahoo's Advanced Technology Division leaving for Google, and Salim Ismail, head of Brickhouse, either getting the axe or leaving of his own accord depending on which news source you read.

Obviously, I have no secret window into Jerry Yang's head. It's possible that there are plans to replace these folks with fresh bodies who aren't entrenched in the culture, which has stifled innovation at Yahoo for quite some time now. Yahoo wouldn't know a new idea if it walked up and introduced itself, one of the main reasons that it has lost so much ground to Google. It isn't just about search and ad share, but also about products and driving users to your site. Yahoo has relied on acquisitions, but they've become the Sun Microsystems of trashing their acquisitions, grabbing everything from MyBlogLog to del.icio.us and then letting them die on the vine. TechCrunch was pimping the “new and improved” del.icio.us FIVE MONTHS AGO. I'm supposed to believe that a company with the resources of Yahoo takes five months to roll out from invite-only beta to public?

Del.icio.us is still the same kludgy interface that it's been all along. I see pictures of the preview scattered about, but nothing has changed. Technology changes at a fast and furious pace, yet Yahoo seems to catch on about as fast as Kodak , and we are all watching how well THAT is working for the former photography behemoth. Yahoo can boast whatever user base they currently have, but I can't be the only one tired of waiting for things to improve or have a better UI or more functionality. If Yahoo truly wants to fight off Microsoft, they need to position themselves as a company that can actually can do it. In the meantime, my bookmarks are at Ma.gnolia.