Yahoo Image Search Sucks
I have used Yahoo for years, it's been my home page since I began using the internet some, wow, 12 years ago, maybe 13 years? Those were the days, internet down some days as much as it was up. Good old Netscape, Netscape Navigator, Netscape Gold. I started out using hotmail, then they are bought out by MSN and basically sold all there email addresses out to spammers, not to mention screwing up their website big time with idiotic ads and annoying shit. So then I moved on, to Yahoo. I remember yahoo being like this:
I was one of those people who actually got my real name @yahoo.com as my email address, using my first initial and last name. The nice thing about Yahoo, as you can see on the above image, was that you could use the service, there wasn't a bunch of bullshit fluff. ESPN.com was nice that way too, but then, a few years in, and MSN bought them out also, and overnight the spyware and shit advertising began on ESPN just like on MSN. God help you nowadays if you decide to go there and look up something sport related. Prepare for a Gillette advertising video to download and a bunch of scroll over ENLARGING talking advertisements, along with streaming video that, unless you are on the fastest of connections, serves no purpose except to destroy your ability to surf the website.
So, anyways, back to Yahoo. I always found it refreshing that the usual corporate bullshit didn't seem to matter to them, they were always about keeping it clean, and avoiding the bullshit. That's why I've used them as my homepage, free email provider, web search, sports page, and image search provider. But lately things have been turning for the worse. It's no news flash that Yahoo is having problems in terms of turning a profit. The sad thing to me is that 'PROFIT PROFIT PROFIT' seems to be all anyone cares about. What about being providing a decent product for the consumer without screwing them over with advertising, spyware, and website search favoritism? That last part, favoritism, is what I'm getting to with this post.
First let me explain how the whole web search thing works. When you type in something to search the web, the search engine looks for web site pages/pictures tagged with whatever you are searching for, then puts them in order based on their popularity, as in, how many people actually clicked on that picture to look at it. It's a simple procedure, and it WORKS.
A couple of years ago, Yahoo Image Groups decided to close their doors and integrate their images with Flickr, an (at that time) unaffiliated site that specializes in hosting images. No big deal, they had a set up that would move all your images for free. I didn't really keep much for images on yahoo so the whole thing occurred without much of my attention. Shortly thereafter, however, I noticed something troubling...
If you go to Yahoo's image search, to try and find a photo of something, wow, whadayaknow, Flickr images overwhelmingly appear first. Does this mean that these pictures are the web's most popular? Hah, hardly. This just shows that Yahoo is selling out. Flickr is a partner website now for them, so now they show favoritism towards Flickr images. Skeptical? Don't be, go to Yahoo, click on Image Search, and type in the word "Horse". I'm sure the actual ordering/numbering will change, as Yahoo no longer goes by popularity and instead focuses on affiliation, but for the search I just did, 12 of the 18 images on the first page are from, yep, Flickr.
All this does is serves to drive their own customers away. I don't give a shit about Flickr, I have no intention of using their service, even their own customers seem to despise them, which is why I use photobucket for my image hosting. So lately I just go to Google.com and use their image search instead. I just searched Google images for the word "Horse", and wow, holy fuck, not ONE Flickr image on the first page. Not only that, but I searched through TEN pages, not one Flickr image. In fact, I'd be willing to bet there are NO Flickr images on the first 100 pages when based, as the search should be, on JUST popularity.
Way to go Yahoo, screwed the pooch on that one. Might as well just sell out to MSN and quit fighting it, you've already begun the transition into a worthless website.
