"The company has hired executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles to find the new CEO"
Appropriate firm given Yahoo's recent struggles. Sorry- couldn't help it.
A lot of people blame Yang for Yahoo's troubles. Some say his emotions got in the way of making a rational decision when Microsoft came knocking. The reality is that Yahoo is just not the product it used to be and they are slightly behind the curve now instead of ahead of it. Kind of sad really- Yahoo was my first search engine. I avoided using Google for a long time but eventually, like everyone else, I relented.
Another Web 1.0 Titan struggling to thrive in the new millennium.
the web is drowning in development tools from appjet to google app engine. web developer tools aren't making anyone money, so its not clear how they would aid yahoo. what yahoo needs is a time machine to go back to the day before adsense and adwords were launched.
This is exactly what we can blame him for. Both Semel and Yang have presided over stretches in time where Yahoo products got their asses handed to them by the competition. If the CEO sees that happening, and then doesn't do anything, and then doesn't even sell the company, you certainly can blame him for his vast incompetence. Furthermore, he seemingly sat and watched while Yahoo's talent pool quit to work for Google or startups! What a joke!
Well maybe I should have said brand/suite of tools. Yahoo's search engine is their main product but really they collect a lot of data, use it to provide useful services, and then try to monetize it- like Google. They are both really information companies, not just search engine companies.
When I said their product isn't the same I meant they are no longer the main info collectors of the web. When considered on the international stage they are still players, however, they have a downward trajectory right now- Google is gaining on them and has all of the momentum.
Consider this: Yahoo is #1 in the WORLD based on traffic (Alexa.com). But nobody will touch their stock? The writing is on the wall. Like I said, there is a downward trajectory there. Good companies find a way to leverage a #1 ranking into dollars and dominance. Floundering companies find a way to allow their stock to drop below 15 bucks while another company sets the standard for the info collection industry (Google).
Consider this: Yahoo is #1 in the WORLD based on traffic (Alexa.com). But nobody will touch their stock? The writing is on the wall. Like I said, there is a downward trajectory there. Good companies find a way to leverage a #1 ranking into dollars and dominance.
to be fair, they have in a sense.
the company is profitable. they have cash in the bank. but the writing is on the wall, google has become completely dominant in ads. yahoo has tried to reverse this but google has just taken more share. web ads are a winner-take-all economy...it doesn't look good for anyone going head-to-head with google
yahoo won't go under, but its days as an independent company are likely numbered
I think there's an obvious business model. It's "fire everyone." #1 in traffic, forget all the web 2.0 stuff, mindshare, and cut costs to the bone. Use the profits to concentrate on more cost cutting, more efficiency. Concentrate on being cheaper at everything. Where stuff is free, use the cost savings to show less ads. In business they call this strategy "low-cost provider."
Yahoo is falling behind because it's stagnant, not because its cost are too high. Yahoos products are mostly free, and it's a very different industry from retailing or machine manufacturing.
Yahoo does not need to cut costs. Cashflow is fine in the company. Cutting costs would be silly at this junction - it does nothing at all to address the problem.
It's like a guy who gets his leg cut off, and your solution is to bind the leg. Yes, that helps, but he'll still die if you don't actually fix the wound.
Yang was a pioneer at the head of an exciting part of Internet history. Yang worked the helm for over a decade and the company did lots of amazing things, but in this economy and combined with Yahoo's problems before the economic issues, it really was an impossible task for Yang to keep his job.
I don't think Microsoft will come in on this one. I really think Murdoch is much more likely, no one is saying it but a Yahoo/MySpace merger is something that scares me.
Could Yahoo and Facebook join forces? Maybe but I don't see a company which is yet to be profitable as being able to buy a financially struggling behemoth.
And Google + Yahoo = anti-trust suit.
So we're left with who can replace Yang? To be honest, I fully expect it to be someone I've /never/ heard of.
I cringe at the thought of hearing a radio ad along the lines of "You've got flickr in your myspace/You've got myspace in your flickr.", like it's a good thing.
Microsoft - Actually, most of these sound semi normal. However, the fact that I also cant think of any of their brands is an entirely different problem.
Yahoo is a sad story no doubt. It's not they didn't try but there was something missing.
Google know one thing, we want to keep people going online, that's there main theme. If people are online they exposed to our adds, done deal.
Yahoo! didn't had that approach they lack the google buzz, the desire that they cause you to spend ridicules time using the net
I believe that it was the Yang responsibility, the man at the top leads the direction of the organisation. It looks like he was too busy making sure Yahoo! will stay independent, cool company instead of making it a profitable business,
Can someone explain why Yahoo has not simply copied the adsense/adwords of Google wich is where all their profit comes from since they already have the same amount of users worldwide? They developed very slowly and still its notthe same thing.
It was like yahoo hired the flair manager from office space as an interior designer. Like they only hired the miserable, desperate people who confuse collecting trolls in your cubicle with being happy. In such a mediocre environment, how can you think or expect anything truly good to happen?
Any next CEO is still a crap shoot that could drive the final nail into Yahoo. All these *ssholes are ready to kick a man when he's down, but I have yet to read ANY good suggestion for turning around Yahoo. Yang just got caught in the perfect storm. How many of you geniuses sold you 401k before the crisis. I've seen stocks drop 80% and bounce back completely before, I didn't remember people lynching the CEO like this.
but I have yet to read ANY good suggestion for turning around Yahoo
there isn't one. google's momentum in taking marketshare hasn't diminished one bit. yahoo has less share in ad dollars then they did two years ago. there really isn't much a new ceo can do to reverse that.
from a shareholder perspective, the msft deal was a no-brainer. especially at today's trading range. yhoo isn't going back to the 34 msft offered them anytime in the next five years. the next ceo will do their best to get something going again
It is obvious in retrospect never at the time. Like shorting financial stocks three months ago (or yahoo) for that matter. If they knew, they would have acted differently.
It seemed reasonably clear at the time to quite a few shareholders.
Anyway, I don't think it's a matter of catching up to Google in search. It's a matter of finding a business model that makes them money. For Yahoo still to be looking for one is kinda like a 53 year old hanging out in a Uni bar all day & getting excited about Oweek.
In retrospect, it would have been better for shareholders to let Carl Icahn takeover and tear Yahoo to shreds and bend over for Microsoft. To make such a choice then, I just don't see a CEO giving it up like that. Thats why the proxy voted the way it did.
He lacked vision, charisma, or basic common-sense strategies to salvage Yahoo, which for all intents and purposes is still a VERY solid company regardless of revenue and share price. Even with the bloodletting, there are still lots of great engineers and good-will there, yet he was unable to capitalize on any of it.
But how much of that is really a management/leadership issue? How much is to do with the fact that Yahoo has been waiting for page views to equal money for a long time now.
People suggest that they should do X with their product Y, supposedly bringing them in tens of millions A drop in the ocean. Or that they need to do Q to get ahead of G! But as a small or local advertiser (the G! secret sauce), using panama is something you do at considerable hassle to get the last 10% of business. Like mining sandy Candian oil.
It's not clear what Yahoo is for, what it does or what it's business model is. That is part of their definition.
you nailed it. goog destroyed yahoo in the ad market a while back. there is nothing that can reverse that now. indeed, goog continues to take percentages from them even today
I hope Geocities isn't sold off. Still, most of those classic old home-spun webpages are dead anyway. I'll just have to backup my Geocities webspace and host somewhere else free.
wonder what kind of person they'll go with for the new CEO
someone who has no issues with cleaning house. frankly they should have gone with an axeman after semel in order to clean up the company.
you bring in the axeman, let him cut for a year until the forest is clear of deadwood and the remaining trees are in nice neat rows, you give him a $10 million golden parachute, send him on his way, and start trying to build something out of the good material left. if they had done this after semel, yahoo might be in a better place today.
i wonder if filo and ash patel will leave also...frankly it might do good to completely clean house of all the old guard and start with a fresh team with no alliances or turf issues.
you can be sure that selling to microsoft will be put back on the table for the next ceo.
Deadwood? As I'm young and hungry, I like he ring of it. But some call it human capital. Layoffs always hurt in the long term - too much know-how is lost.
Are there any alternatives to selling to Microsoft? I can't stand the thought of del.icio.us, flickr, or even Yahoo Messenger being under their control.
It's not like Microsoft has a great (or even good) history of web-based anything.
it doesn't matter now, its too late. google has taken so much share from yahoo in search, advertising, and soon banner ads, that there isn't an option for "turning around" yahoo. that was 2006.
the next ceo really only has one job - fire half the workforce and try to bring ballmer back to the table.
Appropriate firm given Yahoo's recent struggles. Sorry- couldn't help it.
A lot of people blame Yang for Yahoo's troubles. Some say his emotions got in the way of making a rational decision when Microsoft came knocking. The reality is that Yahoo is just not the product it used to be and they are slightly behind the curve now instead of ahead of it. Kind of sad really- Yahoo was my first search engine. I avoided using Google for a long time but eventually, like everyone else, I relented.
Another Web 1.0 Titan struggling to thrive in the new millennium.