This is class uncov flamebait. The author sets up several straw men, and then proceeds to valiantly strike them down. Yahoo, like all companies, has made a number of investments in startups. Some of them work out (viaweb, anyone?), some don't. Unfortunately, this article lacks a concrete analysis of all the investments yahoo has made. Instead, the author makes the argument that yahoo shouldn't have made $2.5bn in investments because three (totaling $0.248BN) haven't turned out well.
The author also fails to provide data that backs up the implied argument that the capital expenditures would've yielded a better return if applied towards the salaries of existing employees.
He's making classic "sunk cost" conceptual gaffe: Future decisions should be made independent of past ones. Even if yahoo had that extra $2.5BN, that doesn't mean the company should hold onto underperforming employees.
I've been trying to find a breakdown of which services make money, as far as I can tell they don't even track it internally at Yahoo for every service, which is why I couldn't find any data for yahoo store.
Sorry I interpreted his question/comment "make money" as "still exists and has revenue" not "has profits" since many companies that are acquired become defunct surprisingly quick (see: Broadcast.com & many of Google's acquisitions).
I was only speaking in terms of my own knowledge. The baseball team I used to work for (Toledo Mud Hens) used Yahoo Stores to power our online store.
A few of their sites are about the only value there, delicious, flickr, finance is about all I use there. They lost my on tv long long ago and I can't remember the last time I searched with Yahoo.
I don't use Yahoo products because they refuse make up for helping the Chinese government jail dissidents. Their response was basically "It made sense fiancially to destroy these people's lives, and morals don't trump Chinese law, so let's just forget about it, okay?" Google at least makes an effort to ensure they don't fall into the same trap.
In fairness to Yahoo Search I have been hearing some commenters in HN actually saying that it gives better search results than Google. Of course there's this thing called brand awareness...
I'm coming around on Yahoo. They've always seemed a bit ghetto since Google came around, but their results are pretty good these days. If you just avoid going to yahoo.com, the experience isn't any worse than Google.
I'd guess, though, that the problem for Yahoo is that their results aren't dramatically better than Google. The bulk of searches are for proper nouns, company names, etc. that both of them serve up perfectly well.
