In fact, our company has been contacted by some of Yahoo’s employees who are trying to get employment at other Silicon Valley startups, before it is too late.

With the Semel hire they brought in a guy who just knew a lot more about what they were already doing - editorial. And their sports and finance sites show that they did keep improving in this area.

Had they thought of themselves as a services company, not a media company, they would have bought eBay when they had the chance. They would have integrated social features, telephony and IM into mail earlier, and better. No clue what happened w/Flickr (how do you now integrate with print purchase?).

By ‘05 they knew that Google’s ad engine was much better, so they started Panama. Would seeing themselves as a services company have helped? Maybe. This upgrade seems to have failed, taking out the keystone in their whole structure. (I tried to integrate Yahoo ads into a site, found Yahoo’s ad network interface to be virtually impenetrable, as if they didn’t really want the business anyway. Strange.)

And now the company will check into a hospital in Redmond for a little grave malpractice. Take a good look at your loved one. He will only return in a box.

At least it makes for good stories for the next 12 months!

Yahoo Board to Reject Microsoft Bid
By Matthew Karnitschnig
Word Count: 317 | Companies Featured in This Article: Yahoo, Microsoft, Google

Yahoo Inc.’s board plans to reject Microsoft Corp.’s unsolicited $44.6 billion offer to acquire the Web giant, a person familiar with the situation says.

After a series of meetings over the past week, Yahoo’s board determined that the $31 per share offer “massively undervalues” Yahoo, the person said. It also doesn’t account for the risks Yahoo would be taking by entering into an agreement …

Forgive me OM, you may have been correct, if this is another indication of stupidity at it’s finest. I see no better future for Yahoo! than to take MS’s offer. As Cramer says, “who do these Yahoo! guys think they are?” Really, their business is going to pot and they think they have more value? They are losing value every day they stay in business.

SO perhaps we should do away with the shsm called a board of directors, get rid of the bloat and stop wasting money.

Why spend millions of ddollars on the rubber stamps and friends of the CEO?

Thanks for the long comment. You are right to point out that we don’t comment often enough about things that are going wrong, or the insanity that is starting to grip the valley.

I agree, that we all, including myself have been guilty of saying nothing, lest we hurt someone’s feelings but that isn’t really a good thing.