People have been wondering about Jerry Yang all week. He’s been quiet since the NYTimes article calling for his head was published last weekend.
This isn’t an issue of him simply being out of town. He was in Washington D.C. on Wednesday meeting with Congressional members (Sen. Herb Kohl (D., Wis.), Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D., Ill.) and Rep. Edward Markey (D., Mass)) who had a few questions for him on the Google search deal.
The real issue, according to our sources: Yang hasn’t been leading the company over the last week, and some key executives have complained that they don’t know exactly where he is, and say that he isn’t answering calls or emails.
President Sue Decker is clearly in charge of the day-to-day operations of the company, but has remained silent over the last week amid mass executive defections and reports of a looming reorganization.
Our sources say that the state of things at Yahoo can best be described as chaos, as rank and file employees have little information beyond what’s being published in the press.
Official silence is not going to fix the situation, nor will an executive reorganization that will be seen as yet another rearrangement of the deck chairs on the Titantic.
Not all of the news at Yahoo is bad. Some terrible decisions have been made, but the company is still profitable and has assets. What the company needs more than anything right now is leadership. Even if it is interim leadership during the company’s discussions with possible new CEOs.
Yang needs to speak to his customers and employees in a straightforward manner about what’s happening at Yahoo and what’s happening next. This may not be his strong point, but he must come out from the bunker to try to rally his remaining troops, while he still has some.
quite fussy,isn’t it?
What Yang needs - are people in the management who support him. At the moment he does not have so many. He wanted to poker with Microsoft, without so much success. But it is by far not the end of Yahoo. If he would be a good leader, he should use this current changing atmosphere to restructure his company and make more flexible. With so much traffic… you can do impressive things. Yahoo needs managers managers and people who do something and not care just of themselves
—
Test you broadband speed (worldwide speedtest)
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I guess hes spending a lot of time with his lawyers :p
What? Yahoo is profitable? And has (shudder) assets?? How horrible! That Yang should be tarred and feathered for leading such an abomination.
Depressing.
mike’s daily rant on yahoo…
gotta keep your name up out there ehh…
as i’ve said before. mike when you get a functioning biz up/running that’s a reasonable fraction of what yang has with yahoo… then your opinions might have more worth than those of my dog… which is.. not much!!
i’m quite sure that yahoo’s largest/most valuable customers know what’s going on with yahoo..
now, if you had/have information on customer defections, then that would be indicative of an erosion of confidence in the biz/rev side of yahoo…
but you’re essentially a tech/us/people/opinion site…
with rants on yahoo!!!
peace
I really used to like your posts when you were supporting the visionaries and the passionate entrepreneur. Boy have times changed, you are now using your power to suck the vitality out the just the kind of people that built the system on which you are feeding. Who the hell gives you the right to tell Jerry Yang anything? Every great entrepreneur has had their bad times and it really takes a certain type of person to cheer them on in these times instead of kicking them when they are down, which is what you have done for months.
Ironically, Yahoo is in much better shape — financially, etc — than many of the start-ups that Tech Crunch reports about daily.
Sometimes it’s hard to see through the forest to spot one of the few trees that still has leaves. Yang will find his Yin, soon. You will see.
Michael, you are losing it…
Leave the guy alone!! He has accomplished so much: something that you will never, never do in your life.
You don’t realize it now, but you are actually tarnishing your own name by changing this (once interesting) blog into a second-class gossipy piece of s*** !!–
More foul innuendo from Techcrunch. Your getting to be a sick man, Arrington.
But since you keep going back to the New York Times article by the Joe Nobody, perhaps your readers should be reminded that the New York Times itself has been severely criticized by its shareholders, far more than Yahoo by the way.
It has a preferred share voting class of 10 to 1 that virtually assures the Board will be elected by the Sulzberger family. His Royal Highness and self-loathing CEO, Arthur Sulzberger the Third, son of the founder, currently “runs” the newspaper and its other array of dead tree delivery businesses as its subscribership continually drops like a rock.
Is subscribership dropping at Yahoo? I think now. So Michael, why the frick don’t you quit referring to the asinine piece that was written by the hypocritical New York Times last week.
Jerry Yang, whatever you say about him, is self made. I dare even one percent of your critical readers could say that. Especially the equity-boys living on mommy and daddy’s trust fund.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W.....andiego%3F
Where in the world is Jerry Yang San Diego?
The mad libs resignation letter guy can make flash games too right or is he just not that talented?
Not sure Yang is going to have any magic words he will put out to set things right. I am sure he is working behind the scenes to pull his baby out of the woods. Anyways in my opinion the worst is behind Yahoo with Microsoft failing in their takeover bid.
@9 Orin Blazer
Ditto!!!!
Michael, keep it up and you will get on Charlie Roses’s “Black List” and, you will see, many doors will start closing for you, with calls not being returned, unanswered emails, etc.
Many powerful people are Yahoo shareholders and, although they might be less than happy with Yang, they know that he is the engine that grew the company to what it is today,
Is this M.A. mad?
Yahoo is a great brand. The issues that Yahoo and Jerry Yang are facing are ashamed. I can only imagine the stress that Jerry is under. From one entrepreneur to another… I hope he turns things around… and quickly. Negative momentum is hard to stop. Good luck.
This place is starting to look like a tabloid. Leave Yahoo alone until you’ve got something to report.
Michael,
You say right in your post that he was meeting with me in Washington D.C.
Lets be fair. My childhood buddy Carl referred this issue to me and I have to investigate it. After all, we had our bar mitzvah together. How could I say no?
So Jerry had to prepare for a couple of days before he met with my committee. In D.C., you’re pretty much guilty until proven innocent.
I also know from talking to Jerry that Carl has tied him up with a few other issues. Confidentially, it’s really easy for Carl to sit back and launch law suits at his takeover targets. He files a lot of papers but really doesn’t have to know anything. Just criticize. You know, a billion dollars can hire a lot of preppy lawyers like yourself.
Anyway, Jerry says running Yahoo and stuff like search is a complicated job. I say my niece could do it. Jerry is a creampuff. He needs some real minds around to supervise like Icahn, Semel, Schachter, Weiner, Horowitz and Rosensweig just to name a but only a few of our mutual friends. Good boys, you know what I mean?
My five year old daughter could run this company better then Yang.
Let the morale suffer and let some people leave. 1,000 people can quit Yahoo tomorrow and there will be no impact on traffic or revenues. That will go straight to the bottom line.
Why are the employees so “key” or so valuable…if people make the company. Isn’t the company in a stagnant state? So who cares if every “key” employee leaves? Is the product that they were heading up going to lose traffic or revenues? NO. Then save the salary. Let 30% quit…this way no severance has to be provided.
Also, Ballmer should go. The stock has gone no where in 8 years. He tried to pursue Yahoo for 18 months and couldn’t or wouldn’t finish. He needs to go.
I was rooting against Jerry and thought he was crazy, but they came back and offered $33 after the Icahn pressure. Is MSFT that much of a baby that the prize they wanted for so long was finally theirs, but they didn’t want to finish. Makes no sense.
(Sen. Herb Kohl (D., Wis.), Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D., Ill.) and Rep. Edward Markey (D., Mass))
When are these Senators going to understand that what & how Yahoo decides to conduct & run its business is non of their (senator’s or state’s) business. Oh, it must be to decide if Yahoo & Google, break the unconstitutional anti-trust laws, right? Interference in private property rights by legislators (even allowed by law) is called state-coercion & state-theft.
Author & philosopher Ayn Rand made a comment about such behavior in any society by stating that : “When the productive members have to ask permission from the unproductive members in order to produce, then you may know that your society is doomed.”
Yes, state-legislators everywhere (the useless & unproductive members) are drafting legislations here and there to prohibit certain operations of private property owners and muzzling the likes of Google, Microsoft, IBM , etc, (productive members) is what Ayn Rand had clearly meant for.
BTW, thanks Mike, I just got a possible awesome job opportunity because of you. Your blog rulz. As much crap as I give Scoble his blog got me 50k in venture cap outsourcing contracts in 2006-2007, so his blog rules too.
Now if I can only finally get by “that sort algorithm is N order of”. They never count inline ASM and machine code ops in those answers.
Anyway thanks
Micheal all these personal attacks against Yang are in very poor taste. I’m going to be reading different sources from now on .. Techcrunch is becoming more like TMZ.com … so no thank-you!
How useless this post was Michael.
I actually agree with @20 and @21.
You shouldn’t be attacking Jerry Yang for being a good CEO Mike.
Jerry’s a good guy.
Please find something else to write about. Seriously.
What’s Twitter doing? Write about them.
I know Yahoo is important to the Tech industry but im starting to get Yahoo overload. Since January (almost 6 months ago ) we have had so many stories about Yahoo , Im suprised we havent had “the janitors” side of the Yahoo story yet.
I love it how when Mike gets his teeth into a company he doesnt let go , he did the same thing with Facebook , that as yet unlaunched search engine company and many others.
Now go launch a real company Mike.
“People have been wondering…”
Michael - Which people would that be exactly? Your malinhorts inside Yahoo?
Hope Jerry finds them so that they can be constructively terminated like the rest of the bumf*cks you discuss that are leaving.
mike, good piece. i think yang AND decker need to be tar n feathered publicly for the way they’ve abused the company recently.
ugh, mike what am i going to do when she is ceo? that will be the icing on the cake.
It’s clear that Arrington has strong opinions that influence how he writes about Yahoo - so on these matters he is more of a pundit than a journalist.
As a pundit he has the right to publish/argue his position and as readers we have the responsibility to recognize it for what it is.
Yahoo has more customers and logs more revenue than it ever has. It’s biggest failing is that it didn’t hit the search jackpot and consequently hasn’t grown the way Google has. In fact, no other F500 business has grown like Google in the last 3 years — does this indicate that every one of them is poorly led?
Technology is about the possibility and practice of dramatically improving our world. The more this blog paints it as purely a political or financial endeavor, the more it loses touch with the spirit of world-changing determination and optimism that make the valley so powerful.
Yes, this blog is becoming the TMZ of the IT world. Thank you Mike.
Please repeat with me, ten times: “I must not drink before writing on the blog”
If you keep this up, TC will loose eyeballs, and advertisers will take note. Soon, you will start losing that nice income from them.
@25 I have no idea who he is talking about either. Internally in Yahoo we haven’t been wondering. Jerry is working his ass off and for a change his last internal communication on Friday didn’t show up on Techcrunch. That should send Arrington into a hizzy-fit. What, there was an internal communication from Jerry that nobody leaked to me? Say it isn’t so…
As far as the chaos. It is mostly in the press, and while that does affect internal morale, the fact that a couple of SVPs have left really doesn’t worry the folks in the trenches, with the exception of Qi.
Yahoo’s stock closed short of $22 Friday, so I guarantee you Michael isn’t the only guy on Yang’s back. It’s called reporting, at least the way it used to be.
Leave Yahoo alone!
He’s out promoting his new book.
You’ve been covering Yahoo so much lately that I actually decided to try out some of their services. Suprise, suprise– I really am enjoying flickr, delicious, yahoo mail, and their other products. Thanks Michael!
If you read the comments, people have clearly got their fill of this story and it’s time to move on now.
As @33 says, now you’re just advertising for Yahoo. People are reading these articles and signing up for Flickr plus accounts ect….
It’s time to latch on to another story Mike. Let Yahoo be. They have good services, and they’re still #1 on Alexa above Google and Microsoft.
You beat it to death, let it go.
I’ve got an idea for a new blog post subject:
When In The World Is Michael Arrington Going To Shut Up About Yahoo?
Arrington’s daily attacks are getting annoying, boring, and repetitive.
I’ve taken TechCrunch off my RSS feed.
Arrington has become disturbingly negative and vengeful recently.
Difficult days for Jerry.
I don’t know why you keep picking on Yahoo and Jerry Yang… Do you even own Yahoo stock?
All you wantrepreneurs talking about Jerry Yang being savaged unfairly by the media and Arrington are coming through as truly pathetic. Jerry Yang might be some ‘visionary entrepreneur’, but since he floated his company, he’s been responsible to his shareholders. The Platonified attitude to business most Valley people have is cringe worthy and annoying both at the same time.
The way Yang has conducted himself about the whole MSFT epsiode has left most of us shareholders seething with anger. I hope Yang and his cronies get the chop when Icahn takes them on next month. Then I hope he gets on the blower to Ballmer and brings them back to the table.
The Yahoo! rankz come ozzata woodworkz on hier. lolz! ….blahg.
So where is the difference between techcrunch and valleywag? Beginning to look like a tabloid.
Yahoo is a great company. This isn’t some story about a blog company that didn’t pay it’s writers or something to that effect.
Jerry did the right thing here. He defended his company to increase the value of the assets in the long term. Microsoft would have simply torn the company apart and cherry picked assets out of the pile, laying off thousands of people and destroying an American IT icon.
That’s totally not cool.
It’s not in the interests of investors. Heck, it’s not even in the interest of Americans in general. America was built on entrepreneurial freedom and fair competition.
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_exhibits.htm
Do we need to see this again?
Do we?
Mike, I hear Twitter is taking a dump, and twittering about it.
DIY Yahoo Resignation Letter
http://yahoorezinr.com/
Enough is enough. I’m putting Techcrunch in the ‘Rarely Visited’ folder in my RSS reader - which I last checked about 6 months ago. There are plenty of other places to keep up to date with Web 2.0 developments. Techcrunch used to be good, now it’s just Arrington on an ego-trip.
Those who want Mike to stop talking about Yahoo! or saying that they will not going to visit Techcrunch, so I’m assuming that you guys are not going to read any newspaper or media because I see everyone talking about Yahoo! nowadays.
@37…I think it’s obvious that he doesn’t own Yahoo stock but probably a lot of Microsoft stock.
I will still come back to TechCrunch but it’s going downhill. Yahoo is the best and worst thing to ever happen to this site.
Too much focus on the negatives indeed.. and ignoring aspects that might interest the readers and/or monitors of the market, for example, Y!’s launching of ymail.com, and the relaunch of the rocketmail.com recently.
Yahoo rocks!
It is totally unfair to knock a guy like Jerry Yang who makes a whopping annual salary of 1 $U.S. Dollar. You think its easy running a multi-billion dollar company filled with thousands of employees?
Considering what he’s managed to build and accomplish over the last 14 years, its shocking he’s only willing to take $1 /year pay. Money is clearly not important to him….what is important is builing a WORLD-CLASS company with WORLD-CLASS products and WORLD-CLASS staff.
Keep us posted on where on earth is Mr. Yang