過人性化的特點 就是雅虎的致命弱點

As Marissa Mayer an-nounced the $4.8bn acquisition of Yahoo’s operating business by Verizon, the US telecoms company, she gave a eulogy to the company she has headed for four years. Yahoo “humanised and popularised the web, email [and] search”, she said.

在宣佈Verizon以48億美元收購雅虎(Yahoo)運營業務的消息時，瑪麗薩•邁耶(Marissa Mayer)爲她領導了4年的這家企業大唱了一番讚歌。她說，雅虎“令萬維網、電子郵件和搜索變得人性化並流行起來”。

It was a backhanded compliment, given that less “universally well-liked companies” have overtaken the enterprise with the exclamation mark in two decades, including Alphabet, Facebook and Amazon. Ms Mayer identified the problem: Yahoo started as a link directory compiled by its founders and remained all too human.

考慮到20年來衆多不那麼“廣受歡迎的公司”超越了這家帶着驚歎號的企業——包括Alphabet、Facebook和亞馬遜(Amazon)——邁耶的讚歌聽上去像是帶挖苦意味的恭維話。她點出了問題：雅虎成立之初是由其創始人編纂的網站鏈接目錄，它一直帶有太過人性化的特點。

Yahoo’s valuation grew to $128bn in spring 2000 because of investors’ faith that human curation could beat search engines — people browsing on slow dial-up lines needed a human interface. But technology triumphed over humanity. The internet was more powerful than they imagined and all that was left for Yahoo was likeability.

2000年春季，雅虎的估值曾增至1280億美元，原因是投資者堅信人力信息篩選會打敗搜索引擎——那些通過緩慢的撥號線路上網瀏覽的人們需要一個人性的界面。然而技術勝過了人力。互聯網比他們想象得更強大。如今，雅虎剩下的只有魅力了。

One example of how far things have come since Yahoo was founded in 1995 is Elon Musk’s “Master Plan, Part Deux” for Tesla, published last week. The electric car company’s founder envisages vehicles that will not only drive themselves but will also form part of an automated fleet in their down time. “Enable your car to make money for you when you aren’t using it,” he concludes.

要說明自雅虎1995年成立以來情況已發生多大變化，有一個例子就是埃隆•馬斯克(Elon Musk)最近發表的特斯拉(Tesla)《總規劃，第二部分》(Master Plan, Part Deux)。這位電動汽車公司創始人構想的車輛不僅會自動駕駛，還會在“空閒”時成爲自動化車隊的一部分。馬斯克得出的結論是：“讓你的汽車在你不用它的時候爲你賺錢。”

Mr Musk’s vision, two decades after Yahoo’s directory seemed a better bet than Google, is still improbable but it is no longer inconceivable. The internet has turned out to be not merely a bunch of computers strung together across a network but much, much more. It has been constantly upgraded by mobile broadband, global positioning technology, smartphones, cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

在雅虎的目錄貌似比谷歌(Google)更值得投資的20年後，馬斯克的願景仍不太可能實現，但不再不可想象了。事實證明，互聯網不僅僅是通過網絡連接到一起的大量計算機，它的範疇要大得多。移動寬帶、全球定位技術、智能手機、雲計算和人工智能都在不斷升級互聯網。

The group of innovations bundled together and labelled as “the internet” proved to be a general purpose technology similar to the steam engine and electrification. It has had a deep, disruptive effect on many industries and is likely to keep doing so for some time to come.

被貼上“互聯網”標籤並打包在一起的一系列創新，已被證明是一種類似蒸汽機和電氣化技術的通用技術。它對許多產業都有深刻的、顛覆性的影響，並可能在今後一段時期內保持這種狀態。

Yahoo’s problem was that it was on the wrong side of the human-technology divide from inception and never found a way back. The closest it came was in the mid-2000s, when Terry Semel, one of its parade of chief executives, acquired Inktomi, AltaVista and Overture in a failed attempt to compete with Google’s algorithms.

雅虎的問題在於，在人力與技術的隔閡中，它從一開始就站在了錯誤的一邊，而且從未找到回頭路。最接近的一次是在本世紀頭10年的中期。當時，走馬燈般上任的雅虎首席執行官之一特里•塞梅爾(Terry Semel)收購了Inktomi、AltaVista和Overture，試圖與谷歌的算法競爭，卻沒有成功。

Ms Mayer’s appointment was another attempt to cross the chasm, since she came from Google. In practice, the best she could do was to trim some of Yahoo’s inefficiencies and adapt its ragbag of products, from Yahoo Mail to mobile to entertainment and news.

對邁耶的任命則是又一次跨越這一鴻溝的企圖，因爲她來自谷歌。現實而言，她可以採取的最佳措施是砍掉雅虎部分低效率業務，並調整其從雅虎郵箱(Yahoo Mail)和移動服務到娛樂和新聞的大雜燴般的各種產品。

The voracious maw of technology is apparent in this deal. Verizon has now acquired Yahoo and AOL, two of the internet’s original big names. They are joining a utility that increasingly sells broadband data connections. Yahoo was the internet equivalent of a phone book and is becoming part of a phone company refitted for the internet.

在這筆最新交易中，科技的巨大胃口表現得十分明顯。Verizon如今已收購了雅虎和美國在線(AOL)，後兩者都是互聯網初期的知名品牌。它們加入的這家公用事業公司在寬帶數據連接領域的銷售額日益升高。雅虎原來像是電話簿的互聯網版本，如今它正成爲已向互聯網轉型的一家電話公司的一部分。

The story of technology dominating humanity and taking most of the reward is common across the internet. Facebook’s content is largely provided by users yet the value accrues to the company and its network — it has a market capitalisation of about $348bn, which equates to the price of 72 Yahoos. Amazon cuts prices by squeezing suppliers, including publishers, and is worth the same as Facebook.

在互聯網上，技術主導人力並獲得絕大部分回報的故事十分常見。Facebook的內容基本上由用戶提供，然而這些內容的價值歸於該公司及其網絡——該公司市值約爲3480億美元，相當於72個雅虎。而亞馬遜則通過擠壓供應商（包括出版商）壓低價格，它的市值與Facebook相仿。

But technology has an Achilles heel. Although each new wave creates and captures huge profits in the early stages, when it is new and wondrous (consider the 19th century railway booms), it eventually becomes routine. Telephones were once incredible machines but today voice calls on fixed lines are at best a commodity in a world where mobile video streaming is free.

不過，科技也存在致命的弱點。每一波新技術潮在早期階段都是嶄新而神奇的（想一想19世紀的鐵路大發展吧），會創造並獲取鉅額利潤，但最終會變得普普通通。電話曾是令人難以置信的機器，然而在如今這個移動視頻流播免費的世界，通過固定線路傳輸的語音通話往好裏說也只是一種日用品。

Nicholas Carr, the technology writer, says the shift from personal computers to cloud computing is akin to the late 19th century switch from electricity being generated locally to being delivered across power grids. The data centres built by Verizon, Facebook, Amazon and others are far more powerful than what preceded them. They also turn on-demand computing and access to data into a utility.

科技作家尼古拉斯•卡爾(Nicholas Carr)表示，從個人電腦向雲計算的轉型，類似於19世紀晚期從本地發電向電網輸電的轉型。Verizon、Facebook、亞馬遜及其他企業打造的數據中心，比之前的數據中心強大得多。它們也把按需計算和按需數據訪問變成了一項公用事業。

There is a hint of this in the Verizon-Yahoo deal. Although a combined Yahoo and AOL, which includes 25 brands such as the Huffington Post and TechCrunch, is likely to contribute only about 5 per cent of the merged entity’s revenues, it could provide growth. Verizon’s core telecoms business is large and generates a lot of cash but its revenues have fallen this year.

在Verizon收購雅虎的交易中，也顯示了這一轉型的跡象。雅虎加上美國在線——旗下擁有《赫芬頓郵報》(Huffington Post)和TechCrunch等25個品牌——所貢獻的營收可能只佔合併後實體的5%，但它們有望帶來增長。Verizon的核心電信業務規模龐大，產生大量現金，然而今年其營收有所下滑。

Other internet and communications companies have also bolstered their revenues with media content fashioned by humans. Comcast, the US cable company that competes with Verizon, took full ownership of the film, TV and music group NBCUniversal in 2013.

其他互聯網和通信公司也通過人力製作的媒體內容提升了營收。2013年，Verizon的競爭對手、美國有線電視公司康卡斯特(Comcast)全資收購了電影、電視和音樂集團NBC環球(NBC Universal)。而Netflix一直在投入巨資製作原創劇集和紀錄片。