AP: MyWay.com: 'Yahoo! is toast'

This story first went out in the New York Times, and their syndicated sites on the 28th of October. It was also covered by Internet.com on that day. On the 29th it was picked up by San Jose Mercury News, followed by CNET on the 31st. Then on the 4th of November San Francisco Chronicle mentioned MyWay in a story that they were doing on the fall of pop-ups.

So now 2 weeks later the Associated Press has gotten in on the act. Why now? Well, because the story has moved on - MyWay today started an advertising campaign criticising Yahoo. Reuters will be releasing a similar story tomorrow.

This is yet another example (think Earthlink, AOL 8.0, iVillage) of a company using anti-advertising rhetoric to gain PR exposure. The reason for doing so is simple - as you can see, the press laps it up. My concern however is that even with all of this press, no one seems to have properly evaluted MyWay's chances of success, or the potential impact of their strategy on Yahoo's fortunes - both of which are likely to be minimial.