

Yang To Step Down As Yahoo CEO - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/17/yang-to-step-down-from-yahoo/

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kwamenum86
"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.

~~~
andreyf
I have a dream where their developer division comes out with something
amazing, reviving the company into Web 3.0 -

<http://developer.yahoo.com/>

Some brilliant stuff there.

~~~
crabapple
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.

~~~
Hexstream
That wouldn't help unless they approached things differently this time around.

What do you suggest they should do for their hypothetical second shot?

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trickjarrett
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.

~~~
olefoo
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.

~~~
Brushfire
+1. The ridiculous string of names that you could get from any of the possible
mergers is definitely weird.

AOL -"Bebo", "TMZ", "Truveo",

YAHOO - "Del.icio.us", "Yahoo", "Flickr", "OneSearch", "alibaba"

News Corp - "Myspace", "Sky", "FX"

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.

------
kqr2
The $64K question is whether the board of directors itself is competent enough
to evaluate and select a new CEO.

After all, the board is the one who asked Jerry back and also had the power to
audit Jerry's decisions.

To show good judgment, they should fire themselves first.

------
shimi
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,

~~~
wyclif
_I believe that it was the Yang responsibility_

Ah yes, that must have been it.

------
Fuca
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.

~~~
LPTS
I saw a video of yahoo workspace.

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?

------
timcederman
Thank goodness, this was long overdue.

~~~
Dauntless
I don't know what you say that. Anyway, just wait for the next CEO that will
make Yahoo just another AOL or sell it in a few weeks to Microsoft.

~~~
fakeslimshady
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.

~~~
crabapple
_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

~~~
fakeslimshady
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.

~~~
netcan
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.

~~~
marvin
All the shareholders who wanted to sell had a pretty good chance to do so
right after the takeover offer was announced.

------
zandorg
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.

------
vaksel
wonder what kind of person they'll go with for the new CEO. Another techie? or
will it be a biz-dev guy?

~~~
crabapple
_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.

~~~
ovi256
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.

~~~
justin
It's too late for them to take actions to preserve their Human Capital. They
are already at the point where:

1) Much of their good talent has quit 2) They are laying off tons of people
anyways

Time to just fire everyone and sell off the company.

------
umjames
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.

------
Shamiq
I feel for the guy, but like timcederman said, it's been a long time coming.

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Prrometheus
This is a victory for proper capitalization.

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FiReaNG3L
Too little too late?

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lallysingh
IMHO, they should let go of search as a focus, and go with apps.

They've got decent properties in that area, and Google's weak anywhere they
can't use their index or relevance ranking abilities.

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dell9000
Nothing happened for the last six months. And nothing will happen for the next
six months.

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helveticaman
I don't see how they can find a better CEO.

------
rokhayakebe
Again.

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crabapple
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.

------
LPTS
I heard he really wanted more time for playing WOW.

