Has The Exodus From Yahoo Begun?

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1. Miguel Paraz
   

   December 4th, 2006 at 1:52 am

   Speaking of Flickr, what happened to the Flickrization of Yahoo?

2. John
   

   December 4th, 2006 at 3:26 am

   Yahoo should be split up and sold off in chunks before the value of the company sinks even lower, it’s already dead even if people can’t smell the body yet.

3. Eric Jackson
   

   December 4th, 2006 at 4:29 am

   We’ll be watching.

   To date, little has been said about Yahoo!’s board and their role in all this. Here’s a suggestion for their 8 of 10 outside directors:

   http://breakoutperformance.blo.....-skin.html

   Thanks,

   Eric

4. Rich
   

   December 4th, 2006 at 6:27 am

   Surprised Brad has not gone yet unless he really is working on some of the changed detailed in the memo.

5. Saul Weiner
   

   December 4th, 2006 at 6:45 am

   If you really want to see a good writeup on that self-serving memo, check out what the Economist had to say:

   Yahoo!’s peanut-butter problem

   Nov 23rd 2006 | SAN FRANCISCO
   From The Economist print edition
   A disturbing trend in the literary genre of leaked corporate memos

   WRITING a manifesto good enough to cause trouble has been difficult ever since Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels set the bar rather high in 1848. So today’s corporate bosses tend to call their manifestos “memos” instead. The genre has thrived in recent years. A decade ago, Microsoft’s Bill Gates penned a classic, “the internet tidal wave”. Last year, Ray Ozzie, Mr Gates’s successor as Microsoft’s software boss, did quite well with “the internet services disruption”, a thoughtful treatise as such things go.

   The latest example from Yahoo!, the world’s largest internet company by some measures, reverses the trend. Brad Garlinghouse, a manager just senior enough to be noteworthy, has put forth a “Peanut Butter Manifesto”, which was helpfully “leaked” to the Wall Street Journal. It was meant as part St Crispin’s Day speech to rally the troops, part corporate analysis of Yahoo!’s many troubles, part turnaround plan—and, it seems, part publicity stunt. But it turned out to be a redundant series of platitudes, split infinitives, clichés and mixed metaphors.

   Yahoo!’s problems—it is lagging badly behind Google in advertising growth and market valuation—stem from a lack of focus, which inspires Mr Garlinghouse to evoke the metaphor of thinly spread peanut butter. But not, however, to the exclusion of other staples of the memo tradition, such as “silos”, “analysis paralysis”, “dropped balls”, and so forth. Mr Garlinghouse briefly gets specific, suggesting that 15-20% of Yahoo!’s staff should be laid off, but then returns to his theme, namely that “the smoothly spread peanut butter needs to turn into a deliberately sculpted strategy” (sic).

   He repeatedly proclaims his loyalty: “I love Yahoo! I’m proud to admit that I bleed purple and yellow. I’m proud to admit that I shaved a Y in the back of my head.” He then signs off with a final exhortation: “Catch the balls. And stop eating peanut butter.” Is it any wonder that Yahoo! is struggling?

6. Dave Coleman
   

   December 4th, 2006 at 6:57 am

   I would like to see what Marquez can do with CBS. Although they recently saw the potential of online interactive media, I am sure the big shots over there are still dinosaurs. The rumors I have heard of working with some of these media moguls is that its slow and painful and any movement at all, let alone from the status quo, is hard to achieve. On the other hand that may be a good thing given that one of Yahoo’s problems was that instead of being slow and thought out they just went everywhere on the net and didnt think their strategy through enough.

7. Bob Sanders
   

   December 4th, 2006 at 7:22 am

   It’s amazing how quickly this Garlinghouse memo has spread throughout the world. Many of my close friends at AOL/Netscape and a couple of other major corporations insist that such executive memos are fairly common. But, they aren’t typically leaked to the press! Here’s an interesting post

   http://ryanmapes.blogspot.com/.....-mark.html

   from an Internet entrepreneur who points out the differences between Yahoo’s failures and Google’s successes—at lot can be found through Garlinghouse’s memo.

8. Adrian Keys
   

   December 4th, 2006 at 8:56 am

   For some reason my friends tend to talk of Google and Yahoo in the same breath…as if they are peers. Try to do somethings on Yahoo and you will quickly realise the difference. To submit a simple website for indexing Yahoo tells you in no uncertain manner that this is likely to take weeks.

   Process notwithstanding, the question is do I have this time. I would want my site indexed and kicking right away.

9. Amit
   

   December 4th, 2006 at 9:37 am

   Yahoo’s got ‘too many chiefs and not enough Indians’. Well, they have a lot of the south asian Indians, but that’s not what I meant here :).

   -Amit

10. NJG from NYC
    

    December 4th, 2006 at 10:28 am

    Yahoo is not going anywhere.

    Out there in the world beyond the Valley, 7 year olds and their Moms are using Yahoo, not Google, to do stuff on the Internet and have some fun. They may find Yahoo a bit cluttered, but they find Google’s blank slate intimidating and un-fun.

11. dj
    

    December 4th, 2006 at 11:09 am

    plus, i hear that David Katz left this morning. That makes only 1 of 3 of Lloyd Braun’s key hires who has lasted more than 18 months.

12. carmen
    

    December 4th, 2006 at 11:24 am

    yeah change is definitely amiss at Yahoo. i actually had to change my firefox search setetings back to Google. since sometimes yahoo’s search page doesnt even load up right away. and when it does, often times the site i want isnt even in the top 5, which is all i can see without scrolling. if theyre having this kind of problems with search, god only knows what things are like in the other areas.

    plus, Yahoo has tried to hire me, and Google hasn’t. that tells me everything i need to know..

13. MovieWalah
    

    December 4th, 2006 at 11:47 am

    This exodus has been on for last year and half….I don’t think this case is any special…..execs in these big companies ( yahoo, ebay, amazon) are always looking for new opportunities where they can make more money….but doesn’t mean that they are ready to jump ship…..

14. David Mackey
    

    December 4th, 2006 at 8:11 pm

    Hopefully he will bring some good innovations to CBS.

15. Jessica
    

    December 4th, 2006 at 10:10 pm

    There is nothing in Brad Garlinghouse’s note that was enlightening for those of us who worked at Yahoo. The place has been rotting at the core due to Terry Semel’s lack of clarity and direction for the past 18 months. I don’t think things are going to get any better until they replace the CEO.

16. David P.
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 2:00 pm

    NJG I couldn’t agree more… My mom and pops still use Yahoo for their front page because it comes packed like a newspaper. Most new internet users don’t understand customization is what makes google homepage so appealing.

17. stress
    

    March 10th, 2007 at 4:13 pm

    i think so….