The Story Of Yahoo And Nokia: The Biggest Tragedies In Today's Business By Adeleke Aroyewun

The story of Nokia and Yahoo are some of the biggest business tragedies ever seen. One can never forget how Yahoo Messenger became so addictive back in the early 2000s.

In those days, the average Nigerian homes do not have internet and so, one is forced to book cybercafé tickets overnight (when it was cheaper) and spend time in different chat rooms.

Yahoo became virtually the only email service provider in Nigeria and ofcourse became a tool for fraudsters hence the term, “Yahoo Yahoo” for fraud in Nigeria.

Reports have it that in 1998, two undergraduates from Stanford University in the United States who had developed a little known search engine called Google, approached Yahoo and asked the company to buy Google for just $1m so that they could face their studies. Yahoo refused because Google redirects you to other websites instead of making you to stay on its own website. This was Yahoo’s undoing.

By 2002, barely four years later, Google’s worth had reached $5bn. Yahoo wanted to buy Google at $3bn but Google refused. By 2008, Google had overtaken Yahoo as an email service provider due to Yahoo’s weak security features and inability to effectively modify its features.

In 2008, Microsoft wanted to buy Yahoo for $40bn but Yahoo said it was too small. Well just two days ago, Verizon bought Yahoo for just $4bn.

Today, Google is worth $500bn. A tragedy indeed!

The message of this story is, if you don’t change, you shall be removed from the competition.

It’s not wrong if you don’t want to learn new things. However, if your thoughts and mindset cannot catch up with time, you will be eliminated.

The advantage you had yesterday, will be replaced by the trends of tomorrow.

Those who refuse to learn, innovate and improve, will definitely one day become redundant and irrelevant to the industry.

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