Good article, i think that having a hacker centric culture is important but branding it and communicating it is also important for a software company, and that is were google excels and yahoo not. Nobody talks about a “yahoo plex”. The problem with software compagnies is the same as with water piping companies, nobody sees the work invested until they use it, it is a black box. So branding and communications is the only way to position and differentiate their products against competitors.”We are hackers, we are better, we have the wow factor, meritocracy etc “. Apple agains nokia does the same. The point is that yahoo considerinf itself a “media company” didn´t brand it or positioned as they should.

And positioning is full time job, nobody can rely on past conquests,remember what happened to google in Japan and in some other areas, as they where seen as “hacker centric” people where using yahoo to search when looking for entertainment and using google to search when working because google search is more precise. Google where perceived to yahoo as wolfram alpha to google. Google had to work hard to change the perception of it brand in japan to overcome this differentiation.