Comments on: Yahoo: Old Wine, Old Label

By: Asleep At The Wheel: The Yahoo Board - GigaOM

Asleep At The Wheel: The Yahoo Board - GigaOM — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 19:51:38 +0000

[...] of it? Instead they decided to reward him with $71 million, much to the chagrin of the investors, before showing him the door. As one talented executive (and engineer) after another left the company, looking to go chase [...]

By: RGB Effects

RGB Effects — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 17:11:29 +0000

Who is Buying Yahoo? Handicapping 5 likely suitors

Written by Kevin Kelleher At least Yahoo can’t complain this week about Google grabbing all the headlines.

By: GigaOM Semel exits masks yet another bad quarter at Yahoo «

GigaOM Semel exits masks yet another bad quarter at Yahoo « — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 15:17:19 +0000

[...] by Om Malik Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 8:16 AM PT | No comments Terry Semel-Sue Decker-Jerry Yang drama had us all distracted from the fact that Yahoo (YHOO) is going to report yet another bad [...]

By: Venture Itch

Venture Itch — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 12:17:45 +0000

Good riddance!

Besides acquisitions of Flickr and Del.icio.us and success of Yahoo Answers, Yahoo has botched everything it touched in recent years.

By: EKS

EKS — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 11:20:27 +0000

"Why Yang, who Semel was brought into replace after he and co-founder David Filo let the company run adrift?"

Not quite. TK and Jeff Mallett ran Y! from 1995 until when Semel came in. TK took it public and managed the street, Jeff managed the company as COO.

By: JFSN

JFSN — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 10:40:23 +0000

Perhaps the last of the media integration shills has finally left the building. Hey, Terry, I hear that Steve Case is looking for someone who still remembers how to speak 1999 jargon. You know: collaboration; leverage; clicks; eyeballs; paradigm shifts; new economy. Another member of the industry of distraction bites the dust. So long.

By: Trevor F. Smith

Trevor F. Smith — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 10:25:03 +0000

"A Yahoo! that better monetizes its audience."

Perhaps someone should tell Yang that the people formerly known as the audience don't like to be monetized.

By: Kevin Kelleher

Kevin Kelleher — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 07:29:12 +0000

Ivan, good point regarding Koogle. But neither does Yang (nor Filo) have experience running a $6 billion company.

SSDJ, Interesting anecdote. Thanks.

By: John

John — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 07:14:40 +0000

“Instead, we have corny PR.” – How long have you been a reporter / blogger for? Come on – Corporate America never or rarely speaks the plain truth! It would be naive to think otherwise.

I think we are being nostalgic about the Internet without a Yahoo! Is the world any worse now that Netscape is gone…? This is the tech / internet field. Shift happens.

By: Ivan Pope

Ivan Pope — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 07:04:55 +0000

‘Why Yang, who Semel was brought into replace after he and co-founder David Filo let the company run adrift?’ You seem to have missed Tim Koogle who actually ran Yahoo! for the first six or seven years. Yang and Filo never actually ran Yahoo! so they can’t really be accused of letting it run adrift before Semel got in. Yang is now CEO for the first time, although he is a founder.

By: SSDJ

SSDJ — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 06:22:06 +0000

I am a Yahoo employee. Let me tell you a small tale of why Yang is not just a weak CEO candidate – he’s even a pathetic CTO.

Every quarter or so – Y! holds a hack day. Six months back Mr. Yang got particularly excited about a hack that lets third party sites show Yahoo ads that leverage the viewers behavioral profile on Y!.

All fine and good. Except of course that this is trivially simple. All that needs to happen is that Y! needs to serve ads from yahoo.com (so that the user’s Y! cookies are visible to the ad servers). However – for the longest time, Y! has not done that (it has used overture.com as it’s serving domain for third party ads).

This purported hack (which was voted best-of by execs – mainly including Yang) – instead required users to sign on to Yahoo and for the third party site to place a login widget on their site. How can a CTO level person not see that a much simpler and more obvious solution is preferable?

Of course, the hack never went anywhere. Mr. Yang may not get it – but thankfully – many lesser mortals in Y! do. In many years of serving Silicon Valley firms, I have yet to see a company with such diminished technical leadership. (Mr. Filo is no better – but that would require even more verbiage).

By: Deep Jive Interests » Jerry Yang, New CEO Of Yahoo: Exactly What Yahoo Doesn't Need?

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 04:25:54 +0000

[...] at 12:25 am While I am not a Yahoo! watcher by any means, the change in the guard at Yahoo! is clearly something that’s reverberating throughout the technosphere, so heck — I’ll give [...]

By: techmine

techmine — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 04:22:23 +0000

Change is always good! Hope Yahoo revives itself and remain a strong competition to MSN and Google.

By: gwhiz

gwhiz — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 02:30:02 +0000

Just anecdotal pondering of the navel... But, was Mr. Semel 6 points to the bad? Or, is Yang 6 points to the good (on rep alone no less)? And, how many frontline employees would it take laying off to yield a 6 point bounce like that? Semel was cut. Somehow, someway he was cut.

Mrs. Decker has a mission critical product to deliver. Until that beastie lands... it makes NO sense yanking her from the lineup and serving her a heaping helping of distractions.

By: James Plouf

James Plouf — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 01:42:17 +0000

A world without Yahoo! is a scary world.