Kyoto’s long history is one of great prosperity (the Heian Period of a millennium ago, when the arts flourished) and great tragedy (the 1467-1477 Onin War devastated the city). But in more modern times, 1868 was something of an annus horribilis.
Annus horribilis
Mr Yang does not deserve the blame for all of this year’s woe. Bad things can happen to nice people. But he has never even given a convincing answer to the question of what Yahoo!’s strategy should be in an ideal world. To be a “starting point” for half a billion web surfers, Mr Yang likes to say. But how is that different from the old “portal” idea which stopped working long ago, or the search box that Google in effect controls?Mr Yang told the conference audience that he wants Yahoo! to become a “platform company”, suggesting that outside developers should build applications to make Yahoo!’s services more useful. But Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Salesforce.com and all other self-respecting technology firms nowadays want to become platforms, too. Why should Yahoo!, which has been less innovative, be the one to succeed? This argument is the one that pains Mr Yang the most. There is a “perception that we’re following,” he admitted, but “we do believe we’re innovating.” The audience of web entrepreneurs, many of them once inspired by Mr Yang’s example, let the matter drop. It is a bit sad to tell this old web hero to go. He must decide to do so himself.
Annus horribilis is a Latin phrase meaning "horrible year". It alludes to annus mirabilis meaning "year of wonders".
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