Yahoo Image Search Fail

It was about 11:22 AM Eastern Time. Already fixed, but you know…

Nobody promised anything, but if you have an image search function it better produce some meaningful results. Since Google Images somehow managed to get blocked at the place where I am sitting right now (probably doing too good finding what you’re not supposed to be looking at), I use Yahoo Image search for blog posts.

Boy, is that a sad picture. No matter what I am looking for, Yahoo Images just dumps dozens of result pages from Flickr. If you run a search for “microsoft commercial“, guess what would you see on pages 2 to 16? A whole bunch of images of military airplanes and helicopters – all from Flickr. Only starting at page 16 there are some easily recognizeable Microsoft-related images.

Given that Flickr is blocked here as well, it’s just an exercise in futility to find any sort of images. But this was worth mentioning, because if it wasn’t for a problem with Google Images I would’ve never thought there is really no alternative.

And you thought Yahoo was doing a good job too, right?

Today I got a call from one of my clients asking me to check stats with him as he is seeing certain discrepancies in Overture reports. We went in and figured that the number of clicks reported by Overture roughly 3 times larger then what is being reported by AWstats. Upon contact, Yahoo/Overture issued a statement that basically says “your software is badwe know better”. Alright, we thought, and ventured to check on Google. The result was astonishing – the difference was 0.6%. Either Google is very good at serving ads that are traceable, or Yahoo/Overture isn’t being honest. Or both.

Last week I subscribed to Yahoo music. Yeah, I know. But I was going to give it a try anyway.

Surely, the service sucked from the very beginning – you have to download a special player (called Yahoo Jukebox), that downloads tons of crap while playing my purchased music. This itself is a very fishy concept – why would company force me to view ads while I enjoy a content I paid for. If the music was free – I would have understood the ads. But I already paid for this – why do you have to feed me all those stupid ads full-screen at 1600×1200 pixels resolution, if I only want to hear music – is totally beyond me. Of course, finding something useful (unless it’s a today’s MTV hit) is next to impossible.

But the real excitement begins when you are trying to cancel the account. Do you think you can cancel from JukeBox? Wrong, you can only upgrade. Do you think you can cancel from Yahoo Music Home page? Wrong again. In fact, the only way you can cancel the service is to go to My Account page, select Manage Premium Services, then Manage Service link next to Yahoo! Music Subscription, then Cancel Service. But you didn’t think it would be THAT easy, didn’t you? While following this narrow path to freedom you are asked for your password twice. Upon the clicking on Cancel Service link another screen appears that (legitimately) asks you for the reason of your cancellation – I selected “The service was difficult to use”. Then another screen apologetically offers to get online help or contact support. However, if you insist on cancelling – hey, we warned ya! – you need to enter your Yahoo password again (third time). Guess what happen then? Wrong, you need to enter your password again. And again. And again. And – it’s the infinite loop. You also cannot change the payment method, should this idea cross your mind.

I do realize that this might be some sort of glitch in software. I do realize Yahoo doesn’t really benefit from my 70 bucks that it is trying not to give me back so hard. But I do realize one important thing – if I trap the customer in a loop like that, I’ll probably loose more then just one customer. Guess what just happened to Yahoo?