Microhoo. Or would it be Yahrosoft? Either way, unless you’ve been living under a rock the past few days (with the only metaphorical rocks netting you a reprieve in this case being: a) the huge upset that was Super Bowl XLII, or b) the intense poli…

–matt

Real Yahoos don’t care about the dolla — it’s about the YELLOW & PURPLE!

While Arrington arrogantly declares that all the options are understood (even as Microsoft’s shareholders appear to be backing out), there’s an angle to the Microsoft/Yahoo! acquisition bid that I think no one’s considered. I think there’s more…

Below is a copy of an email sent to Jerry Yang and staff concerning my departure of Yahoo!.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Mark Hannah II
Date: Feb 5, 2008 9:24 AM
Subject: A disgruntled Connected Life T3 Agent that just quit
To: jerry

Hello Jerry,

Sorry to bother you, and I apologize for troubling you with this, but I felt my story needed to be heard by someone who holds Yahoo! as close to their heart as I imagine I do.

My name is Mark Hannah and I, up until yesterday, worked for the Tier 3 Broadband Connect Life Support Team in Hillsboro Oregon. This Team is managed by Ted Yuzon.

Yesterday, I quit. I started working for Yahoo! through Workforce Logic in Sept of 07. I was previously working for another company in Vancouver Washington, making about $5.00 more an hour than the $11.50 I was making working for Yahoo!/WFL. My resume was referred to Yahoo! and Ted Yuzon through a friend of mine, Jonathan Gray.

I was excited about coming to work for Yahoo! as my personal Yahoo! ID, Nevermore781, has been active since 1999. I even met my girlfriend through Yahoo! Chat over 7 years ago, so Yahoo! is very near and dear to my heart and I write this email now with the utmost contempt for what happened to me.

When I was first told about this job, my friend, Jon had told me about his experience. How he had been rolled to perm employment with Yahoo! in less than 90 days and they had a position open as the last person had moved on to another position within the company. I decided to give him my resume and have him drop my name to the manager in the hopes I could get perm employment with Yahoo!. They were interested in me and my skills based on my resume and I was brought in for an interview. I explained to both Ted and Nick my team lead when I was interviewed about my situation. The pay cut I was taking. I explained to them I was interested in the position based on what I had heard from Jon about being rolled over before 90 days and was told that I would more than likely be rolled over before 90 days if not at 90 days.

Now as I stated previously, I left a job paying me 5 dollars more an hour. I wasn’t happy at the job making more money, it was about an hour drive each way to and from work, and there wasn’t much room for growth from my position and Yahoo! Hillsboro being only about 10 minutes away, well I did the math and I figured as soon as I was rolled over to perm, the dollar difference wouldn’t be much anymore due to the time and gas savings, plus, its Yahoo!. As I said previously, Yahoo! was already near and dear to my heart, so the opportunity to work there was just amazing to me.

So I put in my 2 weeks at my previous employer and started working for Yahoo! on Sept 3rd after passing the background check. Everything was great. I loved the position and I took to it quickly. If you check the performance for the team since I started, you will see exactly how quickly. I was told by my manager that I was “raising the bar” and was complimented on my end of day reports so frequently that other team members were getting offended by the way this performance was singled out by Ted Yuzon.

My end of month totals for YCAMS tickets processed for January alone eclipsed the rest of the team by over double. If memory serves me, I was over 200 tickets ahead of the next closest agent with the same level of access to tools and systems. I don’t quite remember exactly the data from December and previous months, but I’m sure my performance and numbers for previous months put me in either 1st or 2nd position for each month. I had good QA’s and good CareSATs on my tickets too. Please Check! I think you’ll find the numbers interesting.

I’m stating the numbers for fact, not to brag about them. The members of this team are amazing. The team lead is probably the best direct supervisor I have ever had, so I don’t mean to make to make the numbers sound as if they did anything wrong. Basically, the numbers only contribute to my frustration with this situation.

September goes by, and by the end of November, I start feeling the $5.00 difference in my bank account pretty hard. I told this to Ted, and he explained to me about the hiring freeze and how they’d like to roll me over but the hiring freeze and they had no firm date as to when it would be lifted. Since there was no way to get hired at the time, I asked if there would be any way to increase my pay through Workforce Logic. Ted asked the powers that be and was told that the paperwork for getting a pay increase through WFL would be just as long of a process as waiting for the freeze to end would be.

December comes and I am literally praying that the freeze ends so I can be rolled perm. I wrote an email detailing my situation to Ted and I believe he did forward my concerns on to his boss. I had to move back in with my parents to be able to afford my bills on the $11.50 an hour I was getting paid, so you can probably imagine the strain put on me through that alone.

January comes, I keep asking and dropping comments about when is the freeze going to be over and how bad I need to be rolled over. Pleading. I asked my manager time and time again for information and “no news” was the answer I was given most of the time. I was kept in the dark about what was going on.

So Yesterday, I contacted Workforce Logic to try and see if they had any information as to when the freeze would end, hoping they may know something or have more information than “no news”, but unfortunately, they didn’t. That was my limit and I quit. It’s not what I wanted. I don’t like it. I am not happy about it at all.

I wanted Yahoo! to be the place where I made a career and not just another job. I owed Yahoo! a lot I felt. I wanted to make a difference within the company, and now, I am so distressed over this, and I feel like deleting my account and never having anything to do with Yahoo! again.

Again I apologize for having to bother you with this, I just felt like you deserved to know what happened to an ex-Yahoo!

Thank for your time,
Mark Hannah II

YAHOO sell out means the disapear of the brand and the domination of MS over it… and YAHOO! GOOGLE deal means lot of more money to the GIANT!

what is next?

Is there any1 watching out ??

hard decision for yahoo to do… but whatever it was… this offer brought back their name to the news big time!

regards,
ghalo
http://www.jean.ghalo.com

The insiders saw this years ago.

Google is no doubt competing with MS, but through innovation rather than builing some cheapass stuff like adcenter or the ever-crappy live search.

The biggest takeaway from Google is staying focused on core strength and build innovative tools around it. Let MS or yahoo play the catch up game.

Thats already costed yahoo a lot and same will happen to MS. Give up in search. Focus on areas where you are better than google and let google do the catch up.

But I am also scared of Yahoo- google tieup. Instant relief, but temporary solution and way too much going in google’s kitty

Folks on the inside had a creeping feeling well before this debacle that something was amiss at the Big Purple. It’s a quote in my article, which I wont link to here, but you know how to get there.

I really wanted to dig deeper at that one quote, ‘…long before the layoffs, long before the MS buy, things were not right, the shakeup started long before these upheavals”.

But it was late. Point is, forget the buyer, there was a worm eating its way through Yahoo’s heart, starting around Semel’s time.

Could they have turned it around? Sure. But the Microsoft offer may be a sign that its simply too late.

Yahoo! will fall to Microsoft. Like it or not, you will have to live with it.

Giving into Google is just plain silly. Can you imagine handing over the entire responsibility of generating revenue to your competitor?

Microsoft will take out Yahoo! and will also destroy any other tertiary ad-network employing a PPC business model.

google is getting way too powerful and manipulates search results so it’s properties show up preferentially. case in point all the youtube videos showing up as universal search. where are the yahoo, blip.tv videos??? and now it will do the same with knoll. who’d you think is going to show up first for knol. not squidoo, not hubpages, not even wikipedia

google is already having physicians in SF build some pages for 1 -2 k a pop on topics such as “hypertension” which google is telling the authors they can make 150k off of a year. And you want to know why? that’s right they own the search engine and will show their pages over others. and you really think that knoll will be in the sandbox??? not a chance….

a combined yahoo microsoft alliance is great for customers. lets face it yahoo is going nowhere, and with Balmer driving this he’s after Google’s lunch money.. Great cause google needs a little humble pie. and personally yahoo microsoflt will be a great alternative to adsense and adwords.

aren’t the Yahoo assets in Japan / China a great floor for any optimistic hedge fund to try and go after? why wouldn’t someone try and take Yahoo private, then sell off the good pieces to Microsoft et al?

the Microsoft per-share offer isn’t bad for shareholders, but at the same time it’s not totally out of the ballpark for someone else to go after, given the value of the underlying assets.

maybe you’re right the timing / debt markets are tight, but still seems like a TON of value to go after there, and not just cede to MS.

The Microsoft invasion is happening and Google isn’t Netscape. Google is executing. It will certainly be epic.

http://furrier....the-comparison/