The Inquisitr » yahoo

Yahoo’s new ad is like doing Vegas on LSD

Duncan Riley — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 01:52:40 +0000

Yahoo’s new ad campaign is out and they’ve gone with some song and dance in an experience which is something like doing Vegas on LSD.

Actually the introduction is probably a little unfair, because it’s actually far worse than that. The new ad, set on the “You” theme, is more like a LSD trip gone bad. Dancers are intersected with people heading a soccer ball, with the clip pace constantly changed from fast motion to slow motion. There’s some bad Dali inspired scenes and a voice over that I kid you not claims that “you are about to enter a place where time and space collide.”

Seriously though, what the hell has this got to do with a content portal that occasionally some people use to search the web?

The new Yahoo ad as follows. If you’re on any sort of medication, or prone to psychotic episodes you probably shouldn’t watch it. If you don’t fit that criteria, you may after watching this

TechCrunch Yahoo search deal: TechCrunch now offered as default on Yahoo Search

Duncan Riley — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 06:37:11 +0000

Tech blog TechCrunch and search engine minnow Yahoo may have signed a secret search deal that sees TechCrunch search results offered on default Yahoo searches for tech startups.

There has been no public disclosure of the deal that we have been able to find, and asking for comment would be like asking Iran to embrace Israel, so we only have the evidence to go on.

TechCrunch implemented Yahoo Search BOSS in November 2008. In a glowing review, the site wrote about the positives BOSS provided. By itself, the implementation doesn’t stand out, and given the post was written by former TechCrunch writer Mark Hendrickson (who as far as I’m concerned is beyond reproach), there was nothing in the works then of something more.

But as pointed out to me privately over the weekend, Yahoo appears to have returned the favor, in a fashion that offers a lot more for TechCrunch than they are giving in return by running BOSS on their search page (in the above shot, we searched for brizzly.) While we can’t be 100% sure that Yahoo didn’t do it out of the goodness of their heart, the chances of that being the case are slim at best. Couple to that Michael Arrington’s constant criticism of Yahoo’s leadership, and the inclusion of TechCrunch as a Yahoo search option becomes even less likely to be something simply done for the love of an occasionally great tech post.

There’s also a post by Erick Schonfield in August 2009 claiming that “Yahoo BOSS Might Be Bigger Than Bing.” I’m sure that the TechCrunch crew like BOSS, but the cheering for the service vs the otherwise negative coverage of Yahoo seems a little odd. I don’t know when Yahoo started offering TechCrunch as a search option, but you get the feeling that there was a strong relationship between the Yahoo Search team and TechCrunch in recent months.

To some degree, I’d say that congratulations to Michael Arrington and the TechCrunch team are in order, because what ever they’ve managed to pull off will be a huge boost for the site. Yahoo may be the search minnow, but as we’ve seen in our own stats at The Inquisitr recently, they still have the ability to drive some really good traffic. I’m sure with the fullness of time though that Michael Arrington will disclose one way or the other the details of the close relationship Yahoo and TechCrunch now have.

Just how much mojo do you have with Twitter

Steven Hodson — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 20:25:00 +0000

In contrast to the typically plain and boring Twitter ranking sites where you can go and find out how much juice you have in the Twittersphere a new entry from Yahoo is a well done and dare I say entertaining way to find out where you stand on Twitter.

The Know Your Mojo site uses humor along with a great looking site that once you enter in your Twitter username goes off travelling through their “scientific pipe thingy” to arrive at your Mojo level.

Of course being a sucker for this kind of thing I provided my Twitter username and let the Mojo machine do its thing to find out I am a:

hat tip to Martin Bryant over at TheNextWeb

Media buyer claims News Corp preparing to sue Google, Yahoo over news services

Duncan Riley — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 06:34:41 +0000

Harold Mitchell, the founder of one of Australia’s largest advertising groups and a man connected to News Corp locally, said in a radio interview Thursday (local time) that News Corp. is preparing to sue Google and Yahoo to stop both from linking to, and quoting News Corp content.

The claim was made as part of a piece on News Corp’s financial results played on ABC News Radio (I heard it at 3:35pm AEST, but it was probably played throughout the day.) There’s no official transcript available, so the following is taken direct from the audio, and is as accurate as I could type listening to a replay later.

Peter Ryan (ABC Business Editor): Peter Mitchell, chairman of media buying group Mitchell Communications, says that Rupert Murdoch could be in for the fight of his life.
Mitchell: Rupert Murdoch has now accepted the challenge of charging people for content, very difficult because for more than a decade its been given away free.
Ryan: Harold Mitchell says that News Corporation is already preparing a legal battle to prevent Google and Yahoo from taking news material and using it free of charge.
Mitchell: the fight is on two fronts. One is to stop people like Google and organizations like Google from simply taking the information and making it available from inside their product. And the second thing is to get the product in such a way that subscribers are prepared to pay. It’s a fight that has to be won.

There’s no way to confirm whether Mitchell was speculating or does actually have knowledge of pending legal action, although the language in the interview would suggest that he does have some knowledge of pending legal action.

I’m tending towards the latter: Mitchell is regarded as one of the most preeminent media commentators in this country, and he’s not the sort of person who would offer flippant speculation in an interview like this.

The one, and main outstanding question is whether the said legal action would take place in Australia, and/or the United States as well. Australia doesn’t have strong fair use provisions as is the case in the United States, so legal action in Australia would stand a better chance of success.

The stupidity though, as always, is that this conspiracy about Google and others stealing from the likes of News Corp is absurd when all it takes it one line in a robots.txt file to take that content out of Google and the rest within hours, if that’s what News Corp. really wanted.

Microsoft Yahoo deal is a big win for Bing

Duncan Riley — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 01:30:31 +0000

After over a year of failed talks, takeover offers, proposals and god knows what else, Microsoft and Yahoo are finally doing business together in a deal to be formally announced Wednesday.

Kara Swisher broke the news, with AdAge following up with the details. The deal involves Yahoo abandoning its search platform in favor of Bing, with Microsoft ceding ad sales to Yahoo in return. As Michael Learmonth writes:

The deal will take Yahoo out of the search-technology business so it can focus on media, marketing services and sales. Microsoft, especially if it can cede search sales duties to Yahoo, becomes more of a technology and infrastructure company, its disciplines better aligned with its strengths. (It would still, however, have a massive global display-ad sales business.)

The deal will face some hurdles, with the Department of Justice likely to look at the competition aspects, but the chances of it being blocked aren’t great.

The big win out of the deal is for Microsoft’s Bing search engine. The upstart search platform that has been making headway in the search engine market will soon power search on Yahoo, a company with a long and rich online history. According to some reports, Bing’s market share could end up as high as 30%, but more likely somewhere in the 10-20% range (comScore claims Google has a 65% share currently, while others say it’s over 70%.) The Bing engineers in Redmond will be sharing more than a few toasts on the news, and credit where it’s due.

There’s no word yet on how the deal will affect Yahoo and Microsoft properties outside of the United States, if at all. Given the media partnerships in countries such as Australia, I’m betting that the deal will be US only, but we’ll find out in the next day or two.

Q: What browser do you use? – A: Google [VIDEO]

Steven Hodson — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:08:08 +0000

I have to give big props to the guys over at TheNextWeb.com for finding this gem of a video – oh and the headline it’s actually from the video and their answer wasn’t Google Chrome. It was just – Google.

While the Zee might have been surprised by some of the answers from the people on the street I’m not. the fact that the majority of people thought Google, Yahoo were browsers doesn’t surprise me one bit. Heck there was even one diehard “AOL is the web” guy. Rather than spoil it any further take the 2 – 3 minutes it takes and watch the video. It’s a great way to end a Friday.

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Bing continues to surprise, drives traffic to blogs

Duncan Riley — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:00:17 +0000

The success so far of Microsoft’s new search engine Bing depends on which numbers you look at. Different sources claim that Bing is still growing, has lost traffic, or has leveled off. Some say Bing is already ahead of Yahoo, while others say that was temporary.

I don’t know which set of figures is true, but I do know one thing: for The Inquisitr at least, Bing is delivering significantly more traffic than Yahoo.

For the month of June (to the 10th), Bing has delivered this site over three times as many page views as Yahoo. The numbers are hard to demonstrate from the source, as Google Analytics has a problem with Bing traffic: it can’t decide whether Bing is search engine traffic or a “referring site” (although it does count a small number of Google derived page views this way.) The raw figures: Yahoo 8,960 page views vs Bing with a combined total of 28,752. For some perspective though: over the same time period, Google delivered 331,418 page views.

The month before, Yahoo and Live were nearly equal, with Live only slightly in the lead.

I can’t explain all the factors because I’m not a SEO, and I’ve often suspected that there are reasons beyond my knowledge that mean that we don’t do as well outside of Google. However for what ever reason, Bing seems to like us more than Live or Yahoo did. A glance at some of the results would also suggest that Bing is giving blogs a better run as well, and that may be a significant factor. When I posted on Twitter Thursday evening (my time, US Wednesday night), a few people responded by saying they were seeing the same thing.

What ever the reason, I hope we see more of it. Bing has some impressive features, and if it’s willing to share some traffic as well, I’m going to be even more favorable towards it

Are you seeing more traffic out of Bing vs Yahoo now, or Live in the past?

How some American tech blogs make America looking f*%king stupid

Duncan Riley — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:00:38 +0000

Warning to people residing in America: this post contains swearing, or as some of you call it “cussing.” If you are easily offended, avert your eyes, or cover the screen with your bible. The headline is intentionally censored, the rest isn’t.

What is it with American’s and swearing? Here’s a country that produces most of the worlds porn, which creates the most violent and horrid cinema in the history of man kind, and yet a good portion of its residents carry on like school girls confronted by a flasher when someone says fuck. Even in the relatively hard world of tech, the same still applies. Normally reasonable people who likely swear themselves write bullshit tut-tut headlines over the use of the word, even when the context it was delivered was 1. humorous and 2. appropriate, for example Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz saying “fuck you” to Kara Swisher at the AllThingsD conference yesterday. The chances of Kara having taken offense: maybe 1 million to 1 and even the official AllThingsD live blog makes little mention of fuck you being said.

So why do we see shit like this (and this is only a small sample, take a look at the shot above as well):

Now I don’t know a lot about Carol Bartz, but I do know one thing: when she joined Yahoo, it was pretty much fucked. Whether it is still fucked today comes down to degrees, but you’d think that it might be a little less fucked than before. Bartz says it like it is, and if anything she’s actually being quite restrained, after all, most people trying to save Yahoo would be swearing a lot more than Bartz is.

But back to the main point: what’s the big deal here. Yahoo gets a competent CEO, and the best they can go her for is that she occasionally says fuck? Or is it because she is a woman, and only men can swear? Is there a sexist double standard coming from the white boys only club in Silicon Valley perhaps?

Most of all these reports make America look fucking stupid. American soldiers are raping prisoners in Iraq and the President won’t release the photos, but oh my fucking god, the CEO of Yahoo said fuck on stage. The people writing this tripe are usually reasonable people, but they need to stop embracing their 12 year old school girl side and grow the fuck up.

Want Some Free Popcorn From Yahoo?

JR — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:52:13 +0000

In an unusual promotion, Yahoo is giving away free popcorn. Want some?

The Yahoo free popcorn deal allows you to submit some basic info — name, address, phone number, and e-mail — and receive a free bag of popable goodness in the mail. It’s part of Yahoo’s digital TV transition page.

“Cuddle up with your old TV before transitioning to digital and get a FREE bag of popcorn, courtesy of Yahoo!” the site says.

I never expected to be receiving free popcorn from Yahoo, but I won’t say no.

Find it here.

Yahoo in Australia goes for the full inbox sales pitch

Duncan Riley — Fri, 15 May 2009 06:14:30 +0000

Yahoo7, the Yahoo/ Seven Network joint venture in Australia is using full inboxes in its latest campaign.

The spots, which according to Mumbrella were shown briefly last year, involves a love lost because of a full inbox. The pitch is simple: with Yahoo Mail you get unlimited hosting, and the ad ends with a Yahoo yodel that can only be described as Yahoooo-oooo.

The part lost of me though is the problem: are masses of people really suffering from full inboxes? I look at my Gmail account, which I’ve used exclusively from October 2004, and I see 52% full with 142,952 messages archived. Until late last year I used my Gmail account as a backup, downloading all email to a desktop client and leaving everything else as a permanent archive of my correspondence online. Someone using Gmail directly will be deleting emails, where until recently I wasn’t.

Here’s the Yahoo7 email ad. Note that the woman in the ad would appear to be from New Zealand.

Vale Geocities 1994-2009

Duncan Riley — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 04:01:41 +0000

Yahoo has announced that is will be closing Geocities, the web page hosting service it acquired in 1999 for $3.57 billion.

Geocities initially launched in 1994 as BHI, later adopting the Geocities name in December 1995. Geocities wasn’t the first free web hosting service, but for a stretch of time during the first dot com boom, it became the biggest. Its popularity was as much a result of the market at the time; this was a period where dot com registrations and web hosting was expensive for average consumers. The first web boom drove interest in starting web sites, but many didn’t want to pay large sums to get started, particularly when it was then the first time they were establishing a web presence. Geocities offered free hosting, and a variety of tools that made setting up a web page easy such as templates and basic WYSIWIG tools; nothing remarkable by today’s standards, but a strong offering in 1996.

By the time it was acquired by Yahoo in 1999, Geocities had grown to become the 5th largest site online, and Geocities’ URL’s like geocities.com/CapitolHill/1234 were common place across the web.

Yahoo made the acquisition at the wrong time, near the end of the first boom, and managed to alienate many users with a new TOS that claimed ownership over all Geocities content. But Yahoo mismanagement alone wasn’t to blame for Geocities slow and agonizing death. The market changed, and suddenly Geocities lost its appeal. The deregulation of dot com registrations in the late 90’s saw registration costs dive to below $10 a domain, driving an immediate boom in domain name registrations; suddenly a long Geocities URL wasn’t that appealing (In later years I believe they did offer support for custom domains, but it was too late in coming.) The end of the first internet boom caused a massive glut in internet capacity, resulting in lower bandwidth costs, and subsequently a big dive in hosting charges. Suddenly hosting became affordable, so users could easily find a cheap host for their cheap dot com domain, and didn’t need Geocities for their web site.

My first site wasn’t hosted on Geocities, but my second site was. In its day, Geocities was perfect for those wanting to get online, without having to spend money. One of the other benefits of Geocities (and unlike some others at the time), you also had full access to the raw code for your site, so what you created was often only restricted by your skill set and imagination.

Remarkably perhaps, Geocities still has traffic today. Alexa ranks it as the 150th most popular site online, amazing for a service most people have long forgotten. Why Yahoo then would seek to shut it down is a mystery; it’s not as if we got to this point yesterday, and there’s still some very nice traffic for the site. It’s a shame that Yahoo isn’t trying to offload it instead, because this is a brand that in the right hands could fly again.

Vale Geocities 1994-2009. Many of us will never forget you.

Yahoo Launches New Mobile App For iPhones

JR — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:35:19 +0000

Yahoo announced the unveiling of its new Yahoo Mobile application for iPhones today. The app aims to serve as a “starting point” for mobile devices, bringing Yahoo search functionality along with other standard home page features to the mobile interface.

Unlike past Yahoo mobile applications, the new Yahoo Mobile allows you to personalize the launch page with your own e-mail and social network accounts — even if they aren’t Yahoo-related. You can also add spaces for an address book and calendar in addition to the regular news, weather, and RSS feed-style options that you would expect.

The app will eventually integrate support for Yahoo’s Messenger app, expected to launch in the near future.

Yay?

Report: More Than a Third of Yahoo’s Traffic is From Yahoo Mail

JR — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:56:25 +0000

Yahoo’s mail platform sees more traffic than its search site, a new analysis finds.

Following a presentation by new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz this week in which Bartz noted that Yahoo Mail was “becoming increasing critical to the company,” Hitwise compared data from the various Yahoo properties to see just how big a slice of the overall pie Yahoo Mail really took. The data shows Yahoo Mail receiving well over a third of Yahoo’s overall traffic, at 36.71 percent. The Yahoo home page comes in next with 25.48 percent, and the direct Yahoo Search page follows with 11.75.

Yahoo Mail, Hitwise also notes, is still the dominant Webmail provider. Stats from February put Yahoo Mail at about 56 percent of the overall U.S. Webmail market. Windows Live Mail takes 19 percent, and Gmail rounds out the top three with about 11 percent.

With that being said, Windows Live Mail saw a 25 percent drop in traffic from February ‘08 to February ‘09. Gmail saw growth of 88 percent in the same time period, while Yahoo Mail remained relatively constant with a growth of 3 percent from year-to-year.

Yahoo

Bartz gives backing to Yahoo-Newspaper Ad project

Steven Hodson — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 02:39:48 +0000

As I noted last night over on my home blog Carol Bartz is starting the process of stamping Yahoo into her mould of what she wants for the company and the in the trenches staff of the company seem to be enjoying the change. Part of this change as well is a revamping of a 2006 partnership with a select group of newspapers. The advertising partnership was originally setup to deal with classified ads but most recently that has been centered around a new ad system that allows them to sell graphical ads on their sites that are aimed as specific audiences – such as car buyers or sports enthusiasts.

This new system puts users into these different groups based on the pages they view while they are on the site. Miguel Helft from the New York Times explains in an article today about this new move by Yahoo how the ad system is suppose to work

This allows publishers to sell, say, high-priced travel ads not only on travel pages but also on any page visited by a user interested in travel. An advertiser may have paid 50 cents to reach every thousand visitors to a high school sports page, for example, said Leon Levitt, vice president for digital at Cox Newspapers. “Now it doesn’t matter where the page is on the site,” Mr. Levitt said. “All of a sudden we can sell that page for $15” for every 1,000 visitors who are interested in travel, he said.

The other new element of the partnership allows newspapers to sell ads on Yahoo pages, with the two sides sharing the resulting revenue. That lets newspapers promise advertisers that their messages will reach a larger portion of the local audience, helping the newspapers compete more effectively with television.

So far the 100 newspapers involved in the program have been reporting some solid results, even during this downturn which had one of the newspaper exec’s, George H. Cogswell III publisher of the Ventura County Star, say

“If we could do just shy of $1 million in two weeks in a horrible economy, what does it mean for us when the economy turns?”

One of the big concerns to the people involved with the program was the arrival of Carol Bartz but have been assured that in the words of Ms Schneider, Bartz’s new chief executive, that “Carol looks at this partnership as core to Yahoo’s future,”

So it looks like at least one project from the past will survive into the future and settling the nerves of more than a few newspaper executives in the process.

[picture courtesy of Globe & Mail]

Yahoo buying Tumblr…or maybe not

Duncan Riley — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:40:40 +0000

Valleywag reports that Yahoo is in negotiations to by cut down blogging service Tumblr.

According to Owen Thomas, the talks are being led by Yahoo’s Tapan Bhat and the asking price is low to mid eight figures.

AllThingsD though reports a flat out denial from Tumblr.

Although the price might be a little high, the service would be a good fit for Yahoo. Yahoo has lacked in social networking and blogging like services since announcing the closure of the poorly performing Yahoo 360, and it’s a gaping hole that could do with filling. Tumblr also appeals to Yahoo’s younger demographic, and would fit in nicely alongside services such as Flickr and Delicious.

Still, it would be surprising to see Yahoo spending at a time it’s making sweeping cuts and closing services.

Why not reboot all of Yahoo?

Steven Hodson — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:40:14 +0000

Now that Carol Bartz is ensconced in her office at Yahoo and starting to get a grip of what is what with the company the pundits are beginning the typical second guessing that goes on whenever a major shakeup happens at any company. With Yahoo though it is also a time of re-evaluating the road forward for all parts of the company. Kara Swisher over at Boomtown is reporting that there was a meeting between Ballmer, Yahoo’s Bostock and AOL’s Jeff Bewkes and while the actual conversation between the three power players isn’t know that hasn’t stopped the reading of the tea leaves.

The thing is though that this happened almost immediately following the selection of Bartz’ as the new Yahoo CEO and she wasn’t included in the meeting which strikes me as rather strange. One would hope that Bostock isn’t trying to do an end run around the new CEO in an effort to sell off all or parts of Yahoo now that Yang and Decker are gone.As Carol Bartz made it very plain in one of her first meeting of the tech pundits and Yahoo employees – her gut did not favour such a deal and to be honest I hope she sticks to listening to her gut on this one.

I think far more important for the well being of Yahoo; and I don’t mean for the stockholders, would be for Bartz to start at the top and get rid of the bureaucracy that has reduced a once vibrant company to almost a shell of its former self. the first place this should start – especially if Bostock is still trying to sell off parts of the company is to ask for his resignation. How can anyone expect to bring life back to a company when one of the principals is still trying to sell off parts; or the whole, of the company.

Yahoo has been hit hard with the brain drain caused by Yang and company trying to build a poison pill that would keep Microsoft from swallowing the company but that doesn’t mean that there are still some smart dedicated people at the company. In my opinion these are the people that Bartz should be looking to as the needed ingredient to bring the company back to life.

The fact is there is still a lot about Yahoo that holds great promise as a serious competitor to Google and Microsoft and yes it may have taken some really bad broadside shots that could have crippled any other company but Yahoo is still here. In for no other reason than to show its workers and Wall Street Bartz should seriously consider rebooting the whole company from the ground up. All the pieces; as separated as they may seem, are there to bring the company back from the near dead. It will just take Bartz and a dedicated team of real Yahoo employees to pull it off.

Besides it would be so much fun to watch all those pundit that were getting out the shovels to have to turn around and start eating their words.

Sue Decker sends out a good-bye memo to those who care

Steven Hodson — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:32:23 +0000

So it’s official Sue Decker; the albatross around Yahoo’s neck (well one of them anyway), is out the door. In a smart move she announced this at the same time that Carol Bartz was confirmed as the company’s CEO. Kara Swisher over at Boomtown just posted the good-bye memo that Decker sent to all those that were probably too busy to read it as they were having a good-bye party for her. Anyway here’s the memo in it’s full glory

From: Sue Decker
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 2:32 PM
To: all-worldwide@yahoo-inc.com
Subject: The next chapter

Yahoos

After almost nine incredibly rewarding years with this terrific company, I have decided that it is time for me to pursue my next chapter, just as Yahoo! is charting the next phase of its path-breaking journey.

I have not made this decision lightly. I have been with this company for nearly a decade, and together we have been through a period of amazing change during this time. In particular, I want to thank the Board and especially Jerry, who has been my partner and friend from the very beginning, for affording me the opportunity to contribute to Yahoo!’s success.

The Yahoo! of today is a radically different company than the one I joined in 2000, as befits a major franchise in one of the world’s fastest-evolving industries. Financially, the company has grown its revenue base from a little over $1 billion in 2000 to more than $7 billion, and has more than quadrupled its operating cash flow from around $400 million to close to $2 billion. Over that period, working together, we have reshaped one of the world’s most vital Internet brands and transformed the company in ways the outside world is only just beginning to see. We did this by anticipating customer needs and evolving our business model ahead of dynamic changes to the online marketplace. While it is true that competition has never been fiercer, it is equally true that Yahoo! has moved decisively and creatively forward.

I am especially proud of some of the innovative open and customizable products and platforms we have developed in the last 18 months, including:

The APT display platform, which has the potential to transform the way display advertising is bought and sold BOSS (Build your own search service), which lets others use our search technology through open API’s.

The host of mobile and device platforms and services which are fundamentally changing the way consumers experience the internet on devices beyond the PC.

Our new Home Page, which will launch early in 2009, and will be open to 3rd party content and help Yahoo! lean into its greatest strength: understanding consumers.

We also faced the difficult decision of reducing costs in a way that has allowed us to hit our profitability objectives, notwithstanding the tough economy. Not too many companies can say that. The result of all of this hard work is a company which has positioned itself to weather a challenging economic cycle and come out the other side stronger than before.

But the real testament to the success this company has achieved is you. You are the best in the business–tremendously talented, highly skilled and incredibly dedicated to making Yahoo! stronger for our users and advertisers. Even through a turbulent 2008 and in the face of unrelenting distractions, you held your heads high and stayed focused, releasing some amazing new products for users and experiences for advertisers that demonstrate your tremendous insight, energy and passion. It has been my great pleasure working with all of you, and I have every confidence that going forward you will continue to drive Yahoo! ahead and to prosper.

As I turn my attention to helping transition in the most successful way possible, I want to congratulate Carol on her new role and put my full support behind her. I would ask that you all do the same. She and I serve together on the Intel board, so I have had the pleasure of seeing her in action. She is a decisive, passionate leader that I believe will serve Yahoo! well as it embarks on the next phase of its evolution.

I am extremely grateful for the time I have had at Yahoo! This has been a profoundly enriching experience for me, both personally and professionally. As I set off on for my next mission, I want to extend my sincerest wishes to all of you for continued success.

Sue

I wonder how long it will be before the good folks at Yahoo can start believing it when they say Sue Who?

Yahoo – but is there anything really to cheer about?

Steven Hodson — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 02:23:51 +0000

I was going to write up something earlier today when the news was first breaking about Carol Bartz being rumoured to be the next Yahoo CEO, but I figured it would be more interesting to watch the story develop. So now we know that Bartz did indeed get offered the job and accepted. This was quickly followed up on with the news that Sue Decker would be leaving – couldn’t happen soon enough in my opinion. It has also been interesting reading much of the punditry that has been flowing for the better part of the day; and will likely continue for sometime. There’s nothing like fresh meat on the block to get bloggers of all stripes salivating – no more echo … for a couple of days anyway.

While everyone was centering around the actual news of the hiring there were more than a few bloggers that questioned whether or not this was actually the right choice given the lack of knowledge about the web that people say Bartz is lacking. Duh! like that is really some great mystery – give it a rest will ya. The web is a business just like any other business. Just because it is suppose to have this magical quality to be world changing doesn’t change the fact that the idea is to make money. Does the fact that Bartz led a multi-million dollar company into being a Billion dollar company not suggest that she has enough smarts to possible do what Yang, Decker and Semel couldn’t do – not on your life.

More than a few people have suggested that she immediately hire some really smart web people to try and turn around the company. Did we forget that this is the company that was suppose to have some of the smartest web people working for them as the company tumbled into the basement. Maybe what Yahoo really needs is [web] business smart people – you know those people who actually have an understanding that to be a successful web company you have to be first a successful company.

Sound like a misnomer? Well not really if you think about it for two seconds. The fact that Bartz is a successful tech business person with more guts than a lot of us have (remember this woman fought breast cancer at the same time she was changing the corporate culture at Autodesk). If anything her first priority will be to get the rank and file in the company to once again believe in themselves and Yahoo. The best way to do this? Start swinging the axe at those entrenched corporate bureaucrats that have destroyed the company.

As Susan Mernit said in her post today about the news

The rank and file is hangin’ in there, but they are pretty damned fried. Yahoo! is a sweet deal for certain sorts of front end engineer and product developer types, but even the most stalwart (survived 3 layoffs) are starting to look around.

Last time, the old guard won. Mostly, it’s the old-timers–not the social media kids, the Microsofties, or the start-up animals–who are still there. And they protect their buddies, and their turf. So, remember, they’ve survived LOTS of re-orgs and, like moss, they’re still growing there.

and really if anyone of the talking heads speak from any real knowledge on this it is Susan as she was once the Director of Global Product at Yahoo Personals.

Yahoo has needed a really big shakeup for sometime now but from the top down. The company has been decimated in its recent battles to stave of Microsoft and in its attempts to prostitute itself to Google. I have seen more than a few people from Yahoo on places like Twitter and Friendfeed and these are smart web people and I hope Bartz does turn it around but it is going to take more than just the empty platitudes. Perhaps the exiting stage left by Decker is a real signal of the changes to come. I hope they are deep and leave the executive bathrooms full of people shitting bricks about losing their jobs – because they should.

Myself .. well if I had the money I’d be buying Yahoo stock right now because I think there is going to be some surprises in the air and the rank and file along with Yahoo users are going to be the winners.

Can a Jedi lightsaber cut through Superman?

Duncan Riley — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:55:15 +0000

Can a Jedi lightsaber cut through Superman? The answer is surprisingly no. Yahoo Answers is the service that continues to give. Full discussion on the question here.

Microsoft Rumored to be Preparing Large Scale Jobs Cuts

Duncan Riley — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 04:03:37 +0000

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is said to be preparing large scale job cuts due to declining revenue growth as the recession worsens.

Analysts have already started downgrading performance of MSFT stock in light of the economic conditions. The latest downgrade Friday from Citigroup’s Brent Thill said that “the slowdown that the company saw in October intensified into November and continued into December.” Thrill predicted revenue for the June 2009 fiscal year of $62.5 billion, up just 3%, and below the company’s guidance for 7%-10% growth.

Rumors of job cuts at Microsoft have been circulating for some time, with the latest set of rumors comes from Mini-Microsoft, the anonymous Microsoft employee who has had a strong track record of getting rumors right in the past.

According to Mini-Microsoft, some small scale cuts have already taken place, including the disbanding of product groups, and strange staff meetings have taken place in the last week that some are suggesting are preparation for cuts to come.

Cuts at Microsoft would follow broad sweeping cuts among most of its primary competitors, including Sun, Oracle, and Yahoo. Google is said to be cutting contractors, and has made no official statement confirming broader cuts.