Yahoo! Announces Cocktails - Shaken, Not Stirred
Developers, time to geek out. Yahoo! has been working behind the scenes for the past several months on an exciting new technology that we think will deeply impact the web developer community. We call it “Cocktails” …
Context & Ripple Effects
Cocktails lands at an awkward moment for Yahoo: the board's strategic review is still open, with buyers reportedly weighing bids, and Ash Munshi has only just replaced Raymie Stata as CTO. Announcing a developer-facing technology two weeks into a new CTO's tenure reads as a first statement of technical direction from the top.
It is also the latest entry in a long line of Yahoo platform overtures aimed at outside developers — from Widgets to FireEagle to Mash — and it arrives bundled with the company's fall consumer push, where Livestand and IntoNow on the iPad are the showcase products the technology is meant to serve.
First-order effects
- Web developers gain a new Yahoo-backed toolchain positioned around modern web standards, with Yahoo's own fall products — Livestand and IntoNow on the iPad — serving as reference implementations of what it can build.
Second-order effects
- Competing JavaScript and mobile-app frameworks now fight Yahoo for the same HTML5 developer mindshare, and any acquirer weighing a bid for Yahoo inherits whatever platform commitments Cocktails creates.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Yahoo's identity question sharpens: whether the company under Munshi is valued as a media portal or as a platform whose developer tools outlast its own consumer brands.
The trend: Yahoo is attempting its recurring pivot from portal to developer platform, this time betting on standards-based web tooling to anchor relevance while its ownership remains unresolved.