Yahoo Compares Itself to Apples… and Oranges

It is no surprise that companies care about their public images and how people feel about their products. Quite understandably, if a company has some notable achievements to be proud of, it will brag about them - in press releases, in interviews and everywhere people will be willing to listen. But recently I have bumped into an example of such bragging that made me laugh for a few minutes about the “fun facts” that Yahoo uses to make everyone believe the company is larger than… well, almost everything in this world and even the world itself.

As many serious businesses, Yahoo has a dedicated page for press where the company publishes all the press releases. When you open one of the press releases there, in the header of the page you will be presented with one of such fun facts (on a purple background, of course). Every time that you refresh the page or open another press release, you will see another fact. The facts demonstrate Yahoo achievements by comparing them to some real-life things understandable to everyone. So since I don’t think many people will actually visit Yahoo press page and see those facts, I decided to collect them all and publish here for everyone to enjoy (or laugh maybe). But be careful when reading: these facts mostly contain apples-to-oranges comparisons so may be difficult to understand why exactly Yahoo should be proud of such accomplishments. So here you are, enjoy the facts (and I hope you would not mind some of my own comments in addition to the facts):

Fact 1: Money vs. Coffee

Everyday, nearly three times more people visit Yahoo! Finance than their local Starbucks to grab a cup of joe.

Obvious - there are less Starbucks in the world than internet cafes and other access points (confession - there are no Starbucks in my own city and I don’t understand how this liquid can be named coffee at all). What’s more, people are known to care more about things they can eat or drink than anything else in the world. Besides, you don’t have to pay for your share of financial news on Yahoo while you will have to pay for your coffee in a Starbucks.

Fact 2: Knowledge vs. entertainment

More people use Yahoo! Answers than own an iPod.

The first reason is obvious: you don’t have to pay for the answers service while you will have to pay both for the gadget by Apple and for the music you will use it to listen. And maybe getting an answer to a question you care about (and for free at that) still offers more value than listening to a nice track?

Fact 3: Yahoo vs. the Earth

If Yahoo! users joined hands to form a chain, they would wrap around Earth eleven times.

It is no doubt a scary image. But my main question is how they calculated the average length of a Yahoo user to see how many users it will take to wrap the Earth 11 times.

Fact 4: Games vs. Reality

There are more Yahoo! Games users in the U.S. than people living in Tokyo, Japan.

Honestly, I have my doubts about the positive nature of this fact: Tokyo is known to be a crowded city and I tend to doubt this scale of gaming addiction is something worth taking proud in.

Fact 5: Online news vs. Published

If Yahoo! News were a printed publication, it would serve 21 times more readers than Wall Street Journal.

Logically, it is easier to serve more people when you don’t have to use real paper to deliver news to them. And aggregation must help a lot - it is growing easier to deliver news by aggregating content from other places than when you actually have to have full-time reporters you pay full-time salary to. Actually, given the accessibility of online information I thought it would be more than 21 times here. And finally please, think about preserving our forests, never mention the “Yahoo! News” and “printed publication” in the same sentence, it sounds too dangerous.

Fact 6: Mexico vs. Mail

There are more Yahoo! Mail users around the world than two times the population of Mexico.

It would have been worth bragging about if the comparison included China somehow. I am not really impressed by Mexico, thought Yahoo! Mail was actually larger.

Fact 7: Languages vs. Candies

Yahoo! is available in more languages than there are Tootsie Pop flavors.

I wonder if the marketing guys over at Yahoo realize that Tootsie Pop comes in a total of 10 flavors only (yes, I have really counted them all on the website) while the estimated number of spoken languages in the world is almost 7 thousand now. And while the number of languages that must be efficient enough to help people from across the world use the internet efficient should be significantly lower, it definitely is more than 10. So maybe the number of flavors is not exactly a suitable comparison here?

So these are the seven of them and I hope at least a couple of them made you smile. But it is still interesting if Yahoo will ever do a comparison that reflects the reality, or exactly how well it is positioned in the internet market now.