午夜剧场

"Let's develop this feature to beat the competition!" "Let's provide users with this convenient feature!" It would be wonderful if we could achieve both, but reality is rarely that simple. You choose one and give up on the other. If that judgment is wrong, you could find yourself in an irreversible situation six months later. The internet industry, where Yahoo! JAPAN (hereafter Yahoo) operates, is that kind of world.

There are global tech giants represented by GAFA (Google/Apple/Facebook/Amazon), and there is China's ByteDance, which operates TikTok and is sweeping Japan. So, what will the long-established Yahoo do?

In 2018, I served as the product manager for the unit overseeing services such as the Yahoo top page, the Yahoo! JAPAN app, News, Sports, and Weather/Disaster information. Every day, 50 million users visit. The responsibility is heavy, and every day is a series of tense moments. However, I tell myself that maintaining the status quo is the first step toward regression, and I challenge myself with new features and content almost every day.

Returning to the beginning, in the midst of all this, I am asked every day: "What does Yahoo value?" There are various "decision axes," such as wanting to beat the competition or wanting to provide convenience to users, but when I am in doubt, I have vowed to "look at the user." It could be family or friends. It's about whether the people close to me say, "This is convenient!" My son is four years old now, but if he says to me when he's about ten, "Dad, Yahoo is really convenient," that's enough for me. If someone says, "Think about the company's P&L or beating the competition!" of course those are important too, but "when in doubt, the user." How about all of you? Are you exhausted by silly turf wars or meaningless battles with competitors?

Actually, Shenzhen is currently the place where internet utilization is most advanced in the world. This request for a story reached me on my way back from inspecting Shenzhen, and I decided right then and there to tell you all this: If you are fighting within Japan, stop right now. We are only being left behind by the rest of the world. Think only of the users who use your service, and spend all your time thinking: how can we make things more convenient for the user?

Ideals and reality. We are the ones who face the ideals, aren't we?