I Yahooed It!... ... ... ... ... Not!

I "Yahooed" Fred Wilson's article today. Not!

In his article, Fred suggests that Yahoo! needs to do a number of things to improve itself as a company, and he highlights search improvements as a big part of that improvement. (He also calls for more properties to drop the "yahoo.com" as their top level domain and be independently branded.)

Now Fred's overall point is not about search, but about what Yahoo need to do to "de-portalize" itself. This means he things Yahoo! needs to do a better job of sowing its seed on the web and a better job of monetizing its presence outside of its top level domain.

I think I need to "Yahoo" something.

People "Google" things already, so Yahoo! enhancing its search will never cause people to say "I Yahooed it..." "Yahooing" something needs to be something different than search. If Yahoo! had managed del.icio.us well "Yahooing" could mean "bookmarking", as saying "del.icio.us-ed" or "del.icio.us-ing" is still super awkward.

But "Yahooing" something could be any yet-to-be routine action on the internet, it just has to be something.

Of course Yahoo Search needs to be enhanced too, but only because if people eventually "Yahoo" something they'll want a positive search experience while they're at it.

----- 2:14pm note: OnStartUps.com is talking about how easy it it will be to switch from Google if a better engine comes along. Obviously, I'm not convinced. I also don't think the Google Reader example is a good one. Google Reader users are the real users.