This was supposed to be blatant sarcasm for those that missed it and are voting me down. Layoffs are in no way funny, and it's pretty disrespectful that people (on HN of all places) are cracking jokes about it.
Dude, are you new to the internet? On the internet, no one knows you're a dog, and nothing is sacred. Not even Hacker News is immune, being part of the internet.
Looking in from the outside I'd agree with you, but what's next then? Slow death? Buy-out? (at a valuation lower than the bid that saw Jerry Yang get ousted).
They still have some really strong properties (though I imagine flickr to be feeling the heat of Facebook), a 2 minutes to twelve turn-around can't be completely ruled out but it's not going to happen under current management.
Yahoo is really an impression based media company. The number one goal is to drive traffic to properties and monetize it via impressions.
Don't get me wrong -- they've build some impressive technology in house and have/had some bright engineers, but beginning from Filo, Y! was always a media company. The top management continues to drive it in that direction.
As far as properties, Y! Personals was spun off, I believe, and sold to match.com, and that was a pretty profitable business. Y! Real Estate now sells its leads to another company (Trulia?) although when I worked there, they wanted to do something in house.
As content becomes a commodity day by day (via proliferation of blogs, digg-like sites, social media), Yahoo will continue to struggle in a bid to find its relevance.
I'd like to be convinced that I am viewing the numbers the wrong way or some other objective data that validates the position that the Marketing Team adds the most value to the company. Anyone care to take a stab?
> The reduction comes a month after the Web portal let around 600 workers go as part of a strategy by Carol A. Bartz, the chief executive, to pare costs and reinvigorate a stagnant business. Previous rounds of layoffs took place in 2009 and 2008.
Huge mistake - pretty much all the literature on the topic agrees that slow trickles of layoffs are disastrously bad for morale.
If you have to make cuts, you really want do it once, all at the same time, and then put it behind you.
"If you have to make cuts, you really want do it once, all at the same time, and then put it behind you."
I'm fairly sure that's what Yahoo did at the end of 2008 in their "Get Fit" exercise. We were told that the cuts would be severe so they would not have to go through this ever again.
And I think this is now the fourth layoff since that "layoff-to-end-all-layoffs". I hear rumours that they are already scheduling another round of layoffs in engineering later this year, somewhere near September/October.
The usual effect of such misdirected management behaviour is most of the good/talented/valuable people leave earlier than later, as they smell blood in the water.
A lot of people criticize Google for having false starts. Yahoo is the counter example to that - an example of what happens when a technology company fails to make bold bets. They seem to have tried to make safe bets on their cash cow continuing forever and in technology that's just suicide. Even Microsoft is smart enough not to do that.
From a current Yahoo!, "social" will kill the company. It's such a big initiative but no one understands what it means. The company is sacrificing their successful products by trying to make them "social".
Just recently I noticed that the main page in Yahoo! Mail included a Facebook style update feed. Just one of many examples.
I never said they did not. I said I did not feel any sympathy. Though, I would argue, if they added so much value, why are they being cut?
Let's argue that point. I say the Marketing effort has been misguided and not a good return on value. Do you disagree? Or are you saying the blame lies elsewhere. Would you rest it solely with higher management? I certainly wouldn't shield them from blame, but I think the Marketing arm deserves some valid criticism. I point you to this from last year: http://searchengineland.com/yahoo-should-put-ad-budget-into-...
I would almost argue that the Marketing team is the ONE thing about Yahoo that is actually working. It's not the lack of smart marketing, it's the lack of smart functionality that is digging the grave for Yahoo!
Well, assuming I will get downvoted into oblivion when I would rather just discuss it, but what is the basis for your argument?
Since I'm arguing the opposite, I will throw my argument out there. I use various Yahoo functionality in production sites, including YQL, Yahoo's Upcoming, Flickr, and though I no longer use it, I did at one time use Yahoo Pipes. Granted, I use a lot of tools, but that has what kept me coming back to Yahoo, despite the marketing pieces which have driven me nuts over the years, especially the rebranding effort for the "New Yahoo Mail". It wasn't the functionality that drove me away from using it, it was the in-your-face you must use the new Yahoo mail cause it will blow you away marketing that pushed me off. As for the amount spent on marketing and its return value, I obvioulsy dont have Yahoo's financials, but if someone does and wants to discuss that would be great.
