chiyo - 2:07 am on Jul 15, 2003 (gmt 0)

What is a lifetime listing? Until the site owner dies? Until the submitter dies or their company goes out of business? Until yahoo changes their name or expires? If a domain changes ownership does that invalidate the lifetime guarantee? If it changes topic or business model does that invalidate it (e.g. to a porn or casino site)?

Apart from definitional problems this a "lifetime" listing is practically impossible. How would the quality of a directory by affected by having sites in it that have degraded badly and are there just because someone paid for a "lifetime" listing? Surely the directory would fail long term anyway. Just as the current directory did, which did not fail because of the change to google listings, but failed because a mass of paid multi-keyword affiliate domains made it almost useless to the searcher.

From what I remember Y! NEVER offered lifetime listings, even in the early days. They offered for your site to be reviewed for possible listing and inclusion. No implicit or explicit guarantee was made for how long that listing would last.

So to me this discussion is based on a premise that is just not sensible, sustainable or implementable.