Yahoo wasn’t one product. It was dozens—each successful, independent, and looking like it came from a different company.

As the ecosystem scaled, the company faced a choice: continue as a collection of distinct products or unify under a cohesive system.

Yahoo chose unity—but without a clear plan for how to get there, the organization drifted back toward the status quo.

This is the story of building a system inside that reality—one designed to bring structure without slowing teams down.

And what it took to make that system real.

Same name. Different everything.

I joined at that moment—when the decision had been made, but nothing had changed.

Each product team operated independently, optimizing for its own goals, timelines, and users. Without a shared foundation, design decisions were made in isolation—resulting in products that felt increasingly disconnected from one another.

What emerged wasn’t a system, but a collection of interpretations.