Yahoo Co-Founder Yang Now In Charge

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."

with Jerry in charge

[Anonymous Coward]

Yahoo! shareholders are really going to take it in the Ying-Yang!

You're right about Decker, she climbed the affirmative action ladder. A white man with her skills would be a no-name first line supervisor.

Re:Lets hope they change

[Vellmont]

Until then, they will remain a second rate search engine.

Yahoo doesn't see itself as a search engine, they see themselves as a portal. Of course the demographic they're aiming for has changed recently.

I'm not sure why anyone would go to Yahoo anymore. I used to house all crap "we need an email address" email at yahoo, but after having to read about some idiotic thing Britney or Paris did, or some foolish article about "Office tips you should follow!" for the umpteenth time on the front page of Yahoo, I've moved my crap email to Google.

Yahoo seems to think it's ideal customer is the bubble-headed bleach blond who's thinking about being a "career man/woman" now. It's basically Glamor on the Internet. I'm sure there's a market for that, but it seems strange that was supposed to be a billion dollar company is aiming for that small demographic.

Lack of innovation

[vsl2005]

I am the IT Program Manager for a small community college and I think the Yahoo! business portal is an excellent resource for small business owners looking to establish an online presence they can update and maintain themselves. There are lots of other good tools there for market research and general business knowledge. So I am developing a course that will teach small business owners the ins and outs of the Yahoo! program. Yesterday I spent two hours getting transferred to and from various different departments in the Yahoo! corporate system, only to end up repeatedly with the operator at the corporate office who insisted she couldn't transfer me to a live body unless and until I could provide a name and an extension. No good explaining that was the reason I was calling - to try and identity a name and extension that might be able to offer some materials and maybe some guidance in developing the program. In the time I spent discussing this with various Yahoo! representatives, I was transferred, placed on terminal hold, hung up on, and in the end unable to identify a single resource person in the entire company who could assist me. The trick is, I know they must exist! Like many large companies, there just wasn't any mechanism in place for people whose issues don't fall neatly into some predetermined category or script. Nobody willing to take a few minutes and think outside the bloody box. What another poster said was spot on. Note to Jerry - no innovation when you are an innovation company is why you are floundering. Cheers!

Re:Lets hope they change

[eln]

Why would anyone go to "www.yahoo.com" anyway? If you're using Yahoo for your email, go to "my.yahoo.com" instead and customize the page. I never see that sort of bubble gum crap on my front page because I don't have that module. With the My Yahoo customization and adblocker, I get a nice, subdued page with news coming in from various reputable wire services.

Of course, using the site in conjunction with adblocker in order to make it look good probably isn't what they had in mind, but oh well.

Re:pattern?

[vivaoporto]

In Brazil, we have two saying about this: 1) "O olho do dono é que engorda o gado", that (roughly) translates as "The owner's eye fattens the livestock". and 2) "Quando o chefe senta o empregado deita", that translates as "When the boss sits, the employee lies down". Most successful business out there, no matter if small or big, have the owner in a position of both control and supervision.

Re:I hope that I can become second rate

[WindBourne]

Current income does not mean SQUAT. Just 4 years ago, GM was one of the top companies. Likewise, Pure Oil companies are on top of the world (well in america). What matters is how you are set up for the long-term.

Currently, Yahoo is declining and will continue until they change how they do business. As it is, they treat them like a large telcomm. They have AVERAGE pay, AVERAGE benefits, AVERAGE managers, and worst of all, no ownership of ideas. Business ppl and marketing is in control of Yahoo. Google did the smart thing and has marketing working in collaboration WITH techies. That is, techies are developing ideas (labs.google.com) and then marketing looks at how to integrate. Yahoo has marketing telling techies what to do. Sadly, Yahoo has the same type marketing ppl that every other company has; Worthless followers. Yahoo will continue to fall UNLESS they have learned.

And yes, their search engine is 2'nd rate.

Re:with Jerry in charge

[hondo77]

You're right about Decker, she climbed the affirmative action ladder. A white man with her skills would be a no-name first line supervisor.

A few months ago I would have agreed with you. However, Warren Buffett thinks enough of her to add her to Berkshire Hathaway's Board of Directors. I will defer to his judgement on this one.

Big mistake

[CPE1704TKS]

Jerry Yang is not a visionary. He is no Steve Jobs, he's not even a Bill Gates or a Sergei Whatever or Larry Page. He was a Ph.D student who got really, really, really lucky and became a billionaire. His idea was just a bunch of cool sites to go visit, there wasn't even an algorithm behind it.

Yahoo and the internet is a very complex business and requires business savvy. Yang should just spend his money, date model and movie stars and leave it at that. Taking the reins of Yahoo and trying to manage their entire portfolio of businesses is far too complex for someone who doesn't have decades of experience that someone like Semel had. Think about things like branding, partnerships, etc. How do you expect Yang to handle complex business decisions like that?? The short answer is that he can't and won't.

No, Semel did no succeed against Google, however, he had a good idea. Treat Yahoo like a media company, which it is. Google went a different way, and it paid off better. But as a company, Yahoo did not do poorly. It's just that the competition did way better.

Directory is called Del.icio.us

[Anonymous Coward]

The Y! directory was reborn the day they decided to buy out del.icio.us ...

Now, if only they'd integrate delcious data into search in a somewhat controlled manner, it'd kick ass.

Right now, they're sitting on one of the biggest collection of urls tagged and with notes.