Comments on: Yahoo Earnings: Few Surprises, Even Less Clarity

By: GigaOM So Google Stumbles. Should Anyone Care? «

GigaOM So Google Stumbles. Should Anyone Care? « — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 04:51:19 +0000

[...] July 19, 2007 at 9:51 PM PT | No comments Eh tu, Google? Yahoo’s stock sank following its Tuesday earnings report, as did eBay Wednesday despite some signs that revenue and profit growth are looking up. But I [...]

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 17:40:34 +0000

I would love to see the breakdown of what yahoo sitelets generates the most ad revenue and traffic.

I used to spend at least a 1/2 hour a day on finance.yahoo.com Then they redesigned yahoo finance and it was a disaster. One of the worst trainwreck I have ever witness. Now, I might go to yahoo finance once a week.

By: GigaOM 100 days of Jerry «

GigaOM 100 days of Jerry « — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 07:40:27 +0000

[...] Jerry Yang, the new CEO (and cofounder) of Yahoo during a conference call with analysts following Yahoo’s lackluster Q2 2007 earnings said he is going to take a 100 days to review the entire operation. “There will be no sacred [...]

By: joe shmoe

joe shmoe — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 06:48:53 +0000

@matt: Completely agree and I'd say I was unhappy 10% of the times, but those 10% of the times Google disappointed me too. I'd also add that Live has improved leaps and bounds off-late, especially in the speed. Relevancy is still a bit off, the most annoying being very poor spelling corrections. I'd say I am unhappy on Live 15% of the times and 10% of those are bad on all three search engines. Look for Live to come out pretty strong in the coming quarters, IMHO.

PS: Dont own any concerned shares, have no bias for any company -- just enjoy comparing the three to see who's leapfrogging where.

By: matt

matt — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 05:55:52 +0000

I forced myself to use Yahoo search for a week. It's actually not too bad. About 10% of the time I had to jump over to GOOG to find what I wanted, but the rest of the time it was decent.

By: thom p.

thom p. — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 04:35:10 +0000

ANy news on the big layoffs?

By: jesus

jesus — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 03:15:18 +0000

i would accumulate yhoo at this level. the stock is richly valued--despite being well off its highs, which makes it excellent currency for acquisitions. yhoo will acquire itself out of its current pathetic-ness, not be an aquiree. in either case though, it's a win for investors.

yhoo is a content company, not a technology company, so it's tech products (search) will not come out as smoothly, but they will come out eventually. it's not rocket science afterall. yhoo must stick to content, use stock as acquisition currency and keep buying for goshsakes!

By: Rehabmart

Rehabmart — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 01:58:41 +0000

Yahoo has some serious fundemental problems with it's pay-per-click platform (Panama) and it's partner distribution channels (Publisher). I use both, and each have fatal flaws.

Panama - perfectly good keywords are rejected constantly. I can only get 1/20th of the traffic I get from google, so it's not even worth managing. It's actually frustrating.

Publisher - ad matching is horrendous. Yahoo will show ads about pet grooming on car part web sites, and water filters on software web sites - totally irrelevent. Half the time, no ads at all will be shown.

If I owned Yahoo stock, I'd be dumping it fast. MSN is going to overtake Yahoo, which will soon go the way of AOL.

By: Rick

Rick — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 01:57:26 +0000

Please refrain from the expletives. Thanks.

By: raindeer

raindeer — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 23:26:35 +0000

Interesting numbers from Yahoo! I’ve been reading Good to Great by Jim Collins at the moment and it seems that Yahoo is showing all the signs of an also ran company. (have a look at http://jimcollins.com) First, it didn’t have a level 5 leader, who selfishly looked at the best interest of the company. They may have ousted him, but one hopes the current management team is up to snuff. Second, the question is whether they have the right people on board and in the right place. They’re hiring seems to be erratic and not really best of breed in the business. Third, and really bad from my point of view. They don’t confront the facts. Fact is, Google is a better ad company than Yahoo will ever be. Google places its ads better, through better technology and because of that has commanded the biggest share of eyeballs. Yahoo has nothing to offer to potential advertisers on the technology front. Fourth Yahoo doesn’t know what it wants to be: Is it the best content company in the business, or is it the best search company in the business? Well, it cannot be the last one. Google has taken that and outspends Yahoo in keeping that goal. Google has a clear focus, though it should dabble less and spend more time in achieving in coherently achieving the goal. Yahoo should focus on its content business, which in the US is the best it can ever be. Yahoo should make it their business to make sure that whenever somebody is looking for something that Yahoo does Google first points to Yahoo for the content, to such an extent that the user will go to Yahoo without even looking at Google (Yahoo financials is a great example) Fifth, Yahoo should cut all the crap it isn’t willing to deal with. Sell the advertising business to Microsoft, they’re dumb enough to pay top dollar for it. Then move to Google’s Adsense and squeeze every ad dollar out of it. Advertisers would love it.
Sixth, keep focus, keep discipline, keep adding great content, keep focus, discipline, add more great content.