I was at Yahoo from 2004-2011. Yahoo often had products before the market was ready for them. Sometimes, the product would hang on and grow with the market; sometimes it would get shut down.
In some cases, like mobile, Yahoo was both too early and too late.
There was a good amount of time where Yahoo would launch something, shut it down, then Google would launch the same thing to much success. Of course, now Google is in the habit of shutting things down, another thing Yahoo did first ;)
I used to think there'd be a lot of value in going through Yahoo PR launches from N years ago and if Yahoo had shut it down, consider if it makes sense as an independent business. Although it can be hard to tell why they shut things down, so it might not be obvious which things were the product worked but the market wasn't there and which things had non-obvious issues that made the product unworkable in practice.
In some cases, like mobile, Yahoo was both too early and too late.
There was a good amount of time where Yahoo would launch something, shut it down, then Google would launch the same thing to much success. Of course, now Google is in the habit of shutting things down, another thing Yahoo did first ;)
I used to think there'd be a lot of value in going through Yahoo PR launches from N years ago and if Yahoo had shut it down, consider if it makes sense as an independent business. Although it can be hard to tell why they shut things down, so it might not be obvious which things were the product worked but the market wasn't there and which things had non-obvious issues that made the product unworkable in practice.