A common point of debate within Yahoo! was whether employees should feel compelled to use Y properties (“eat your own dogfood”) or whether said properties should have to compete on pure merit to earn internal usage. But in any case, there’s always pressure, even if subliminal, to use internal products.<\/p>\n
I’ve free of such influence for six weeks now. What Yahoo! services do I still use? Which ones not so much?<\/p>\n
Yahoo Answers: not so much. Even the 1 point-per-day for visiting doesn’t entice me. If I had a burning question that would be a good fit for a community answer, I’d go back.<\/p>\n
Yahoo Mail: all the time. I used Yahoo mail long before I worked there, and I’ll be using it long after.<\/p>\n
Yahoo News: almost daily. Still a good collection of global, national, and local news.<\/p>\n
My Yahoo & Finance: multiple times daily. I’ve peeked at iGoogle, but the Y is too comfy, and the competion isn’t easy enough to get comfortable with. But often the page takes up to 30 seconds to load. If that doesn’t improve, I’ll leave.<\/p>\n
Yahoo Search: still my default. But only because of tweaks I put in place with SearchMonkey<\/a>. The baseline quality of results is right on par with Google. I still recommend Y search to friends and family.<\/p>\n Yahoo Maps: rarely used. Google maps is just better, particularly street view.<\/p>\n