With the right products, I'm of the opinion that you can name your company just about anything and be successful. I mean is Google's name any better if you don't keep their products in mind?

Let's also not forget about GoDaddy, which for a time was successful with that name and hobbles along (operating at a loss) even today.

I don't think there is a major problem with Yahoo products. I tried Yahoo mail yesterday and the signup process was nice. It looks like a viable alternative to gmail.

Google is a nicer name, it comes from googol which gives it some math meaning beyond the sound. Yahoo is only an onomatopoeia that sounds dumb to me (I am not a native English speaker though). Also, if you look in the dictionnary (http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/yahoo):

    yahoo:

    a rude, loud, unpleasant person, especially one who has little education

Indeed, if the roles were somehow reversed and Yahoo! was the juggernaut and Google was dying, people would no doubt be saying the same stuff.