This is a case study in how not to run a business. As organizations grow, more so if they grow rapidly like Internet companies, they become bureaucratic and complication is the result. Government anyone?

I recently set up a Yahoo account so I could use Flickr.com. I didn’t really need to set up one, but wanted to favorite a photo of a hobby of mine. Seems simple, right?

Wrong. Took me about 20 minutes just to set up an account. First, I had to figure out why when I clicked on “Sign in” (just to check if I had already created an account before), I went straight to Yahoo. Now, I knew Flickr had been bought by Yahoo, but how many other people know that? That’s not common knowledge, and most don’t care.

Now, it didn’t go to the Yahoo log in screen, either. It went to their home page. How does that make sense? Alright, so I’m writing it off as a link error. Looks like they’re about to introduce a new home page design, so you’re forgiven for the error.

Not so fast. I go back to Flickr and now notice they have a “Sign up” button. “Awesome!” I think….that should be easier. Unfortunately, that takes me back to Yahoo, but at least I’m on their sign in page.

I can click from here to sign up to Yahoo. They’re so nice that they’re giving me an email address. Wait! I don’t want another email address. No matter, they’re giving me one anyway, and I have to pick a Yahoo ID for the email.

They have a nifty feature that checks each field to make sure it’s accurately entered as you go along. I’m thinking this is great because I won’t have to worry about entering something wrong, and then having to reenter passwords and the like when the page reloads (most of you know exactly what I’m talking about). Unfortunately, it doesn’t work.

I don’t notice anything that says my birthdate is required, so I only select the month and move on. Later, when clicking the submit button, it says my full birthday is required. I don’t think that’s really relevant, but enter it because I’ve already committed a lot of time to this effort. Remember, all I want to do is get a Flickr account.

It takes a couple of minutes to pick an ID. I’m thinking that’s the ID that’ll be on everything. I was wrong again…it’s just my Yahoo ID and email…and again, that’s something I don’t want.

I’m getting down to the “Captcha” block…the jumble of weird looking letters that most major companies use to prevent spammers from getting email addresses through robot programs. I’m not dumb, and have only ever had one time I needed to refresh the letter jumble because I couldn’t read it. Here, I have to refresh it three times before I could read the letters. On top of that, when I clicked the refresh button, nothing happened. It finally refreshed after waiting about 15 seconds, and clicking it 10 times.

By this time, I’m royally frustrated. What should have been at most a 5 minute process (most of which would be picking a nice user ID I’ll remember) is four times longer.

But, wait! It’s not over. I’ve got my Yahoo ID. I go back to Flickr. I have to pick yet another ID to be my Flickr ID. That’s fine, though, since I could choose my usual ID whereas I couldn’t in Yahoo.

A part of good business is removing obstacles to people becoming customers. It’s smart, too. Why frustrate your customers when it’s unnecessary? They’ll go somewhere else.

Google is the best example of things integrating seamlessly. On almost any of their separate programs, whether it’s Gmail, google.com, or YouTube, it’s easy to sign up. Once you’re in on most sites, you have that single ID to use across all of them. In fact, it’s so seamless, if you check the box to stay logged in, you can go to a new Google site, like Google Voice, and you’re already signed in.

That’s how you please customers. Remove barriers. Keep it simple. Yahoo: you’re doomed to mediocrity until you learn this.

Now I’m going to go play with my new Yahoo email account. Uhm…no I’m not.