Yahoo Yawn: Back to the Portal
October 17, 2007 by Jayvee Fernandez
Filed under Computers
I almost didn’t blog about the much-awaited results of Yahoo’s 100 day strategic planning. After thinking about it, I now know why: I’m rather underwhelmed.
Consider Yahoo’s three new strategic goals as outlined by CEO Jerry Yang, the founder returning to the helm of the company after the disastrous six-year reign of old media dinosaur Terry Semel:
1. Become the starting point for the most consumers.
2. Become the must-buy for advertisers.
3. Deliver open, industry-leading platforms that attract the most publishers and developers.
There’s a much shorter way to say all that:
1. Portal.
2. Ads.
3. APIs.
The first thing is what Yahoo was and should have been since its inception, but failed to become. The second thing is squarely Google’s territory, and will remain so while Panama and the YPN crawl behind. Only the third thing is even remotely sexy, in an emerging standard kind of way.
Don’t get me wrong; I do like Yahoo’s API-rich products (Flickr, Pipes, Widgets). In fact, easy APIs are probably the one area where Yahoo can really compete with Google. They just missed the boat on ads and portals. I’m sticking with iGoogle for my portal and AdSense for my ads. That’s Terry’s fault, not Jerry’s. It just feels like Jerry’s still trying to catch up to Google, instead of accepting Terry’s defeats and choosing battles Yahoo can still win.
While I must congratulate Yahoo on returning to its roots and embracing emerging standards, all while graciously ceding search to Google, the three things Jerry wants to focus on are hardly earth-shattering. It took a whole multinational company one hundred days to come up with this? It’ll take a lot more than portals with fancy APIs and a second-rate AdSense copycat to repair corporate DNA corrupted by old media mutations.
“It took a whole multinational company one hundred days to come up with this?”
so true…
I think they must watch more Hannibal Lecter films and maybe.. just maybe… they’ll learn a whole lotta things.
Let me quote Mr. Lecter in the film Slence of the Lambs… “First Principle: What’s in its nature?” You do not need a hundred days to figure out something that can be tought of in one bull session.
It’s good that Yahoo is picking themselves up from where they fell down. But to finish the race, it’ll take more than determination.
Maybe it’s time for a little retrospect..
look into their organizational structure, processes, setting goals and perspectives. Are they setting the right goals? Are these goal achievable even if they already have existing limitations?
I’d love to see the drama of overcoming their limitations and finally crossing the finish line.
Ah, but there is no finish line, Clarice. ;)