Can Yahoo re-invent itself?
Rewind to 1999, a year when I was just starting my career as a researcher. I was doing my very first piece of digital research - understanding Indian internet users, at a stage when usage was gradually becoming wide scale. Believe it or not, in those days, we had PCs in office, but they did not have an internet connection! And I used to go to the cyber cafe around the corner on weekends to pass a couple of hours. It's hard for me to believe that such an existence was possible. Actually, I remember being quite happy, sociable and active. But I digress. So I was talking about doing research among internet users and the name of one portal was on everyone's lips - Yahoo. Yahoo was the gateway to the internet for literally every first time user that we spoke to. And the very first action of a first time internet user (often with a friend perched on a stool next to him at the cyber cafe) was to create a Yahoo! Mail account. It was the go-to sites for jokes (and was responsible