Now I have another theory: stupidity. Google has been running the world of Search, largely due to their team of Ph. D.’s and unusually strong thinking. You never see anything dumb coming out of Google. Yahoo! on the other hand shows a lack of engineering understand in a graphic that is supposed to show the workings of their new strategy:

Do you see the problem with this graphic, located on the Yahoo! Developer Network Home? Spin an internal gear the the whole thing comes apart! How can you expect a company with such lousy engineers to know a good deal when they see one?