> The reason for Yahoo's failure was its loss of dominance in search to the Chrome Browser.

I'm afraid your timeline might be a bit off there.

Yahoo outsourced their search to Google in 2000 [1] while google didn't buy android until ~2005 and chrome didn't come out until ~2008 [2]. And before google, yahoo had outsourced to 'Inktomi' and before that IIRC to 'Altavista'

Yahoo wasn't even trying to compete in search. This was the era of companies like "AOL Time Warner" where people thought web portals were media companies, and company bosses spooked by the dot-com crash were trying to diversify into tangible assets.

[1] https://www.wired.com/2000/06/yahoo-goes-gaga-for-google/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome

> And before google, yahoo had outsourced to 'Inktomi' and before that IIRC to 'Altavista'

> Yahoo wasn't even trying to compete in search.

Yeah. This is a common MBA-ism: focus on the top of the value chain where the largest margin exists.

The theory itself is actually not wrong, TBH; it's just that Yahoo misidentified where the top of the value chain lay. They thought the top of the value chain was the users, and that sponsered content was the product. Google correctly identified the users as the product and the advertisers as the top of the value chain.

IOW, Yahoo sold curated content (product) to users (customers). Google sold users (product) to the advertisers (customers). To Yahoo, the people visiting their site was the top of the value chain if you're directly pitching products to those users!