Yahoo! is purchasing the technology behind the Artifact app. Om Malik provides an insightful commentary here: Why Yahoo bought Artifact’s leftovers

“Legacy services (like Yahoo) must realize that they must evolve beyond their traditional information systems, that were predominantly subject- or tag-based, to be relevant. They need information streams to be personalized. It is important to do so because that would allow them to hyper-target advertising, which is their primary revenue source.

…

Yahoo is smart by ‘keeping up with the times.’ Also, likely, they didn’t pay a lot of money for it. Yahoo is owned by a PE firm — and the management is pretty savvy with investing their dollars.”

I tend to think of Yahoo! as the place where good ideas and good services go to die. Malik is a thinker I respect, thus I take note of his opinion on this deal.