Verizon and Yahoo!: a Smart Partnership

I was glad to see this news today:

Verizon and Yahoo! Team Up to Deliver Broadband Service to Verizon Online's DSL and Fiber Customers

I'm a long-time fan of Yahoo! Critics might argue that they took their eye off the game and let Google overtake them, and that might not be wrong. But Yahoo! still does some great things as a provider of content and Web-based services.

I never thought much of Yahoo!'s partnership with SBC in their DSL business, but that's more a reflection of my long-term dissatisfaction with SBC as the ILEC where I live.

But Verizon continues to improve its customer service, and I think they deserve applause for their commitment to a real fiber rollout. In order to make this partnership really work, though, it's important for Yahoo! and Verizon to make sure that their collaboration results in a real value-add for the customer, not just pasting a big "Y" everywhere on the Web browsers of Verizon's customers -- which is about all the SBC partnership seemed to amount to.

AB -- 1/17/05