Nobody currently employed by Yahoo has the answer to Yahoo’s problems. Sue Decker just announced a reorganisation of the few remaining executives she has but with people like Qi Lu and Joshua Schachter gone it boils down to rearranging (rickety) deckchairs on the Titanic. I doubt if they can actually agree what Yahoo’s problems even are, let alone solve them. Brad Garlinghouse came closest with his peanut butter manifesto, but he left too. That document boiled down to the observation that Yahoo is unfocused and bureaucratic.
The result was that in the good times Yahoo went on a totally random spending spree with no idea how all the acquisitions fitted together. As I have said before this approach has meant they lucked out and got hold of delicious and Schachter for an absolute bargain $30m. Unfortunately they then proceeded to do nothing with the only tool which could make any meaningful impact on search with the result that the man who created it subsequently left the company.
Sculley’s ghost
When they hit trouble their first instinct was to kick out Terry Semel and reinstall Jerry Yang as CEO. Presumably the idea was some kind of John Sculley/Steve Jobs mojo but the plan had one minor flaw: Yang is not Jobs. To a large extent companies reflect their leaders’ personality. So Microsoft likes to overcomplicate and have fifty different versions of everything, Apple is ultra secretive and design focused and Yahoo can’t make a decision on anything. After a year of fudging all Jerry’s fudge has caught up with him and it looks like the fudgathon is likely to end with a much deserved boot up his backside.
There is no doubt that Yahoo has a lot of good properties which make decent money. They have almost nothing to do with each other so why not spin them all out as separate companies and set them free from Yahoo’s bureaucracy? Then at least they would be smaller and freer to innovate. It may not be the whole answer but with Yahoo going down they need some radical action not endless reorganisations.
Read more:
On Yahoo
On Microhoo
On Microsoft’s biggest mistake
On Joshua Schachter
Pic: Forbes
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