Yahoo wants to compete with Google and Microsoft through the power of nostalgia

Yahoo isn’t really a name you think of when big tech is mentioned nowadays. Sure, the company never fully disappeared despite falling out of fashion, but it’s likely the last time you heard about Yahoo, it was because of a data breach, of which there were plenty. And yet Yahoo has continued to truck along despite some iffy years with Prabhakar Raghavan, who reportedly ran the search engine into the ground (would it shock you to learn he’s now working at Google). But these things are in the past, which is precisely what Yahoo is thinking will see users return: nostalgia for a time when search engines actually performed their job competently, all the while using AI to supercharge Yahoo’s core benefits, like reporting news, sports scores, and delivering your email.

Fans of anything and everything retro could see Yahoo make a comeback

At least that’s the plan

A report from Business Insider recently shed some light on Yahoo’s plans to recapture its early success, and it has everything to do with leaning into its strengths. In the world of tech, Yahoo is ancient, and if you haven’t noticed, many old things are cool again, like Game Boys and JNCOs, which Yahoo plans to use to its advantage by making a nostalgia play. And the thing is, it could work, as the service really hasn’t changed all that much over the years. It’s still a place to read your emails, get your sports scores, and read some news, and the plan appears to be working when Yahoo Mail saw a 125% increase in Gmail-connected email accounts.

Yahoo is also very aware of its competitors’ reputations, and Google is certainly having a tough time convincing anyone that its products will last. Plus, it’s not like using Facebook or Twitter offer the street cred they once did, whether or not you are for or against community notes. And it’s looking doubtful replacements like Bluesky or the handful of federated sites that popped up will be taking their place anytime soon, so people are generally stuck with these mainstream services if they wish to communicate with the giant mass of people that use them.

Yahoo’s AI plans are grounded in reality

That is unless an older competitor leverages its long-running brand with a healthy dash of nostalgia and AI, and AI is certainly of interest to Yahoo, where it already takes advantage of large language models from OpenAI and Google to “supercharge” its core functionality. So, instead of wasting time building an LLM from scratch like Google and X, Yahoo instead chose to use the competition’s offerings to improve its content, like summarizing sports scores or refining the overall UX, you know, putting users first, something Google could learn a thing or two about.

Can Yahoo beat the competition with old-school thinking?

Ultimately, a nostalgia play makes sense for Yahoo, especially when competitors are making it easy for everyone to hate them. Yahoo is absolutely correct; there is a real window of opportunity here if it plays its cards right, as there are plenty of unsatisfied users out there who are sick of the status quo and eager for something better. Searching on Google Search is a nightmare filled with endless ads and AI hallucinations, which is why Bing is gaining ground, but Bing is also heavily using AI, which actual users don’t appear to care about, leaving room for Yahoo to swing in with its inviting purple design serving up a fresh dish of search results, emails, and news, just like the old days, uncluttered and user-friendly. By gosh, it could work.