Yahoo's agreement this week to put Microsoft in charge of its search business officially ends its run as a technology company, according to
BusinessWeek. With the deal, Yahoo is shelving a
half-decade-long effort to rival Google in the market for search-related advertising, thus going further than ever to dismantle a culture of technological innovation, engineers and former staffers
tell the business magazine. Yahoo,
BusinessWeek admits, will still employ plenty of engineers who work on products other than search, including e-mail, instant messaging, and mobile
applications. But, according to sources, search is what gave Yahoo its real tech credibly.
"While we had lots of technologies, it wasn't rocket science stuff," Lowell Goss, who headed
user experience for Yahoo before leaving in 2006, tells the magazine. "Search is the rocket science stuff."
Read the whole story at BusinessWeek »
