Yahoo Co-Founder Yang Now In Charge 91
Raver32 writes "Yahoo Inc. Chairman Terry Semel ended his six-year tenure as chief executive officer today and will hand over the reins to co-founder Jerry Yang in the Internet icon's latest attempt to regain investor confidence.
Semel, 64, will remain chairman in a non-executive role.
Besides naming Yang as its new CEO, Yahoo appointed Susan Decker as its president. Decker, who had been recently promoted to oversee Yahoo's advertising operations, had widely been seen as Semel's heir apparent."
Lets hope they change (Score:5, Insightful)
Always quit while you're #1 (Score:5, Insightful)
Always quit while you're #1 - from TFA: "Semel ranked No. 1 on The Associated Press' survey of 2006 executive compensation with $71.7 million (U.S.)"
I'm guessing Yahoo's performance was not quite #1 though.
pattern? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lets hope they change (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lets hope they change (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope that I can become second rate (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, that I could be so second rate!
Yahoo needs a lot more than head changes (Score:5, Insightful)
They also need to make some serious technical advancements to work against their currently spammy environment. Once they get the spammy nature of their internet operations back under control, they can focus on community projects to build a fan-base which they sorely need and then start to work on professional services.
It's not just "too easy" to be an advertiser, it marks against them. They need to at least APPEAR to be a community force on the internet that happens to do a little advertising on the side to pay the bills.
Study how people use the net (Score:4, Insightful)
I am hoping Jerry Yang will return Yahoo's focus to the useful. Many great and creative products have come out of Yahoo, albeit in a disunified, confused, under-promoted way. If he can tie them together into a strategy of how people use the net, like the original Yahoo directory did, he may be on to something.
I also hope they rebuild and continue the Yahoo directory project. As someone who routinely encounters too many junk hits in Google to make searches efficient, I'd like to see a dual-pane search that gives (a) raw results from the search engine and (b) search results from an updated, RDF-tagged, classified and vetted Yahoo directory.
A legend continues... this news makes me smile (despite a lack of corporate loyalty of fanboism, of course).
Mediocre is good enough (Score:3, Insightful)
If you consider $3B in profits to be "continuing to fail" then I'd love to see your definition of success!
Perhaps Yahoo is focusing on a market who simply doesn't understand that it *could* be better than Yahoo currently is. No one goes out of business underestimating the lack of intelligence in the population. Lowest common denominator can make lots of money. Perhaps it's their strategy.
Re:Mediocre is good enough (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm going to invest in a company, I'd like to see a return on that investment that is at least as good as the market average. Otherwise, I'm better off with an index fund or some other type of investment.
It's not good enough for a public company to simply make a profit, since it's competing for investment dollars with all other public companies. The company has to be seen as an investment that will generate greater returns than the various other investment options out there.
While it may seem silly that a profitable company is still "in trouble," this is the risk that is taken when a company goes public. A private company could make $1 net profit, and that's $1 more than it needs to survive.
Re:Lets hope they change (Score:3, Insightful)