Yahoo Facing A Crossroads
The thing everyone needs to pay attention to is a memo by Yahoo Senior VP Brad Garlinghouse, one that lays out what the rest of the world is complaining about Yahoo, its flaws and mistakes, and demands a new direction before things sort of fall apart.
One mistake he focuses on is Yahoo’s redundancies (Flickr/Photos, Del.icio.us/MyWeb, Music/Musicmatch, Messenger plugins/Widgets), several products doing the same thing. While there is nothing wrong with taking more than one shot at a particular problem, Yahoo is showing a crisis of confidence, unable to believe in anything and put their support behind some great products. Instead, they compete with themself, and don’t win anything because their customers have no idea in what direction they are heading.
We lack a focused, cohesive vision for our company. We want to do everything and be everything — to everyone. We’ve known this for years, talk about it incessantly, but do nothing to fundamentally address it. We are scared to be left out. We are reactive instead of charting an unwavering course. We are separated into silos that far too frequently don’t talk to each other. And when we do talk, it isn’t to collaborate on a clearly focused strategy, but rather to argue and fight about ownership, strategies and tactics.
…
I’ve heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular.
I hate peanut butter. We all should
There’s so much in there that is right on, and needs to be read by everyone at every tech company. Yahoo is a great company in a bad dry spell, but is filled with so much talent that it can rise again. If leaders like Brad take control of the wheel, we are going to see something amazing. Microsoft is in the middle of a recovery, one that is working, albeit slowly, and I’m convinced Yahoo’s depression is shallow enough that they can still recover before Microsoft does.
Otherwise, with a $36 billion (and shrinking) market cap, Yahoo will get bought by somebody who sees the real opportunity there. I’ve got news: Yahoo has so many pageviews, any large company can justify the acquisition.
Everybody’s talking about the memo. John Battelle says that Yahoo’s COO has asked Garlinghouse to head a group looking into these issues. A VC notes the lost opportunities in Yahoo’s acquisitions. Arrington says it may be more of a power move by Garlinghouse, to grab credit if already proposed changes are a success, and at the very least, either Brad or Terry Semel will have to go. Mini-Microsoft has great comments about how this pertains to and reflects on Microsoft. Dave Winer goes the other way.
The Times says Yahoo’s problem is monetization, that it reaches more people than any other, but can’t make the money it should from those eyeballs. That makes me wonder: What if several major web companies all bought Yahoo together, in order to run it as a central web portal that pointed to all the partner’s properties? While I don’t think the web needs to be centralized, I do think a lot of money could be made in a concerted effort. Imagine Google running search, video and e-mail, News Corp running social networking and old media, and other companies providing other services, all in some sort of “Mall of the Internet”? It’s an awful idea, creatively and innovatively, but think of the money!
Beyond that, it looks like Yahoo seems to think the holiday shopping season applies to corporate acquisitions. Valleywag reported Yahoo picked up MyBloglog, a blog stats/community site; Download Squad reported that Yahoo bought Bix, a social contest service, and GigaOm reported that Yahoo acquired Kenet Works, a Swedish mobile company. It turns out that Yahoo didn’t actually buy MyBlogLog, but is in talks to do so. Still, everybody’s talking about Yahoo, but is anyone willing to bet on them?
One mistake he focuses on is Yahoo’s redundancies (Flickr/Photos, Del.icio.us/MyWeb, Music/Musicmatch, Messenger plugins/Widgets), several products doing the same thing. While there is nothing wrong with taking more than one shot at a particular problem, Yahoo is showing a crisis of confidence, unable to believe in anything and put their support behind some great products. Instead, they compete with themself, and don’t win anything because their customers have no idea in what direction they are heading.
We lack a focused, cohesive vision for our company. We want to do everything and be everything — to everyone. We’ve known this for years, talk about it incessantly, but do nothing to fundamentally address it. We are scared to be left out. We are reactive instead of charting an unwavering course. We are separated into silos that far too frequently don’t talk to each other. And when we do talk, it isn’t to collaborate on a clearly focused strategy, but rather to argue and fight about ownership, strategies and tactics.
…
I’ve heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular.
I hate peanut butter. We all should
There’s so much in there that is right on, and needs to be read by everyone at every tech company. Yahoo is a great company in a bad dry spell, but is filled with so much talent that it can rise again. If leaders like Brad take control of the wheel, we are going to see something amazing. Microsoft is in the middle of a recovery, one that is working, albeit slowly, and I’m convinced Yahoo’s depression is shallow enough that they can still recover before Microsoft does.
Otherwise, with a $36 billion (and shrinking) market cap, Yahoo will get bought by somebody who sees the real opportunity there. I’ve got news: Yahoo has so many pageviews, any large company can justify the acquisition.
Everybody’s talking about the memo. John Battelle says that Yahoo’s COO has asked Garlinghouse to head a group looking into these issues. A VC notes the lost opportunities in Yahoo’s acquisitions. Arrington says it may be more of a power move by Garlinghouse, to grab credit if already proposed changes are a success, and at the very least, either Brad or Terry Semel will have to go. Mini-Microsoft has great comments about how this pertains to and reflects on Microsoft. Dave Winer goes the other way.
The Times says Yahoo’s problem is monetization, that it reaches more people than any other, but can’t make the money it should from those eyeballs. That makes me wonder: What if several major web companies all bought Yahoo together, in order to run it as a central web portal that pointed to all the partner’s properties? While I don’t think the web needs to be centralized, I do think a lot of money could be made in a concerted effort. Imagine Google running search, video and e-mail, News Corp running social networking and old media, and other companies providing other services, all in some sort of “Mall of the Internet”? It’s an awful idea, creatively and innovatively, but think of the money!
Beyond that, it looks like Yahoo seems to think the holiday shopping season applies to corporate acquisitions. Valleywag reported Yahoo picked up MyBloglog, a blog stats/community site; Download Squad reported that Yahoo bought Bix, a social contest service, and GigaOm reported that Yahoo acquired Kenet Works, a Swedish mobile company. It turns out that Yahoo didn’t actually buy MyBlogLog, but is in talks to do so. Still, everybody’s talking about Yahoo, but is anyone willing to bet on them?
posted by sandra valiroun at 10:14 AM
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