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Yahoo Shakes Things Up
PreacherTom writes "Growing strife inside Yahoo! has erupted into a sweeping management and organizational shakeup. CEO Terry Semel announced yesterday that the company will be reordered into three groups: one to focus on advertisers and publishers, another to focus on Yahoo!'s base of over 500 million users, and a third on technology and development. While Semel denies layoffs are in the future, there will be replacements in the upper echelon for the world's most popular website. The changes, the most extensive at Yahoo in more than five years, cap months of speculation about how it would respond to slowing sales growth, a slumping stock price, and a steady stream of executive departures in the past year."
I think Yahoo has been coasting for years. If my website logs are a reflection of their popularity they are in big trouble. Google beats them at a rate of 100 to 1. On top of that their version of 'adwords' is the worst I have seen (From an ad buyer's perspective). It takes days for them to approve the ad (Google takes minutes) Then when they do approve it they change the wording - usually done by a non native English speaker! I have had my software adverts changed to include the word warez. WAREZ! They need to clean house or they will need to fire more until they do.
Steve Wiseman
http://www.windows-admin-tools.com
In related news, Yahoo also makes sweeping changes to their site design, leading to buggy site behavior, slower load times, and general unrest among Yahoo's populace.
http://tv.yahoo.com/listings;_ylt=Av10rj4CcfmHR7cY IFFvYySAo9EF
Beta??? This came out two weeks ago. It is *SLOW*.
I went to AOL!TV instead.
I mean this is the one company you know for a fact is run by a bunch of "Yahoos"!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
... the company will be reordered into three groups: one to focus on advertisers and publishers, another to focus on Yahoo!'s base of over 500 million users, and a third on technology and development. ... informally known as users, lusers, and nerds.
Note that only the first division actually makes money. Let the infighting begin.
* runs like the AC he is.
Beholden to its investors, Yahoo can't push through hard times with grit and wisdom. It must bow to its ever-fluctuating market value and carve itself into living and dead tissue like a wolf caught in a trap. To emerge from a downturn is to have rent itself into a skeleton of its original physique, and the remaining body is less able to handle the next downturn, especially as those dips never stop coming for a flailing company.
In private hands the company leaders may be indulged to take risks that a public company would never be allowed to contemplate. Jerry Yang sits quietly in his house thankful for getting on the train early, but the company itself dies slowly as its blood gushes into the heads of other Silicon Valley firms.
right, 500 million unique users? I'm surprised they didn't claim to still be the world's most popular search engine, surely they would with those figures.
Maybe they should relaunch their website as Houyhnhnm.com. I am sure it would be much more peaceful and rational than a company run by a bunch of yahoos.
google is just out doing yahoo in all fields now, i mean there where the days when yahoo was the all mighty website, but now it has become just another annoying site.
WulframII - Free Online Mutiplayer 3D Tank Shooting Game
... let the rest of us now how to pronounce Houyhnhnm.com ?
Feared!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
The problem is that they try to offer too many services and can't dedicate enough resources to keep those features growing. Therefore, other companies who focus on one only service that competes with Yahoo can do a better job of catering to their users. I have used several of Yahoo's services for a few years and I have watched competing services expand to provide more features than Yahoo. It's not that Yahoo's services are bad - their competitors are simply growing faster since they only focus on one service.
Oddly enough, I have found Yahoo's search to be more accurate than Google for certain topics. Google has always been great when doing narrow searches and it used to be pretty good at wide searches too, but lately I have been finding that I need to go through several pages to find what I am looking for on a wide Google search. I got fed up with this, so I tried Yahoo search and I was pleasantly surprised. Yahoo seems to consistently provide the results I look for within the first few entries. I'm not saying that Yahoo search is better than Google, but it seems like Google doesn't appear to be the magic bullet that it used to be.
Example of a company completely taken over and ruined by marketing dweebs. Whoever is responsible for this train wreck needs to hang: The 9
A new CEO is starting work. He walks into his new office, and the old CEO that he's replacing is packing up his stuff. The former CEO wishes his successor well and hands him three numbered envelopes which contain the solutions to any serious management problems.
...".
After about six months, the stock slumps. The new CEO opens the first envelope. It says "Blame your predecessor". He holds a press conference and confidence in the company is restored.
Another six months pass and another crisis arises. He opens the second envelope. It says "Reorganize the company". He does so and the crisis passes.
After a year, things are terrible. The stock price is in a downward spiral. The CEO opens the third envelope. It says "Go get three envelopes
[Insert pithy quote here]
a fantasy sports site, they would bury yahoo once and for all.
I hope the changes mean that they will start listing to their site users. They mangled tv.yahoo.com recently, and received plenty of feedback about it. I wrote to them years ago pointing out that their finance section really needs to have an option for graphing "adjusted price" (which they do list in their historic table, so they clearly have the data) or "growth of a $1000 investment" to smooth out the jumps from dividends and capital gains distributions that have no economic meaning, but nothing ever happened. Comparing a graph of a mutual fund to an index like the S&P 500 isn't very easy when the mutual fund price drops by 10% in December because it paid out a capital gains distribution (no money was lost -- they just gave 10% of it back to the investor).
Where do they come up with this 500 million users rubbish? If Yahoo has that many than I would guesstimate that Google has 1.8 billion users, closing in on 6 billion very fast. But whatever, last time I went to yahoo to get some email, it was very difficult to actually find the "mail" link... it's so cluttered with media & celebrity bullshit.. a painful experience.
What is it? There's a generic appeal to working for web companies like Yahoo and Google, but there's a specific appeal to some of them, like putting out new projects, working on your interests, so on. I see Yahoo as having shared the generic appeal of those company types in the past and now they feel more second tier, both to users and to jobseekers. If you aren't appealing as more than just a job in the field, it's going to be hard to get the people that can really help you be innovative, flexible and forward-thinking, especially when you're competing with companies (like Google) that not only have that image publicly but (at least in my experience) deliver for their employees. Anyone out there working for Yahoo? What drew you to it, what keeps you there, what seems to be the type of new hire, and what draws them?
It used to be easy to get TV listings from Yahoo. They just changed it so that you need to be signed into an account to get them.
The TV listings were the last reason I had to go use Yahoo, which is sad in a way as I used to be a big fan of almost everything they did before they went all corporate.
The laptop will come with a picture of Bill Gates holding the laptop high in one arm and the following written below...
Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send to these, the homeless, tempest-tossed,
This LAPTOP with VISTA and an Activation Key.
That was an informative reply. Still can't pronounce it... but recognize the reference.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I was a Yahoo email and messenger user for years - because there were no decent alternatives to many of the services they offer.
Till GMAIL introduced the increased storage limits the yahoos who run Yahoo was sleeping. The interface of Yahoo Mail is the worst. The standard webmail interface of my company is better designed.
The Yahoo messenger in its default installed state is a classic example of a cluttered bloated design. Plus why should I see an annoying flash ad in the bottom pane? At least put a text ad which does not flash itself every millisecond.
Tat Tvam Asi
Can Yahoo really catch up with Google? Perhaps they waited too long to do this. Right now they need to do their own thing and try to do something that Google isn't.
Klingon Software is not released, it escapes, inflicting terrible damage onto the enemy as it does
I worked at Yahoo for a year, in the Media Group. While the departure of Lloyd Braun is a step in the right direction for the Media Group at least, it is not enough to solve Yahoo's problems. The technology leaders at Yahoo, starting with Farzad Nazeem and including others such as Phu Hoang, provide no leadership. There is no organized approach to development, just a bunch of people randomly creating product. The lead technologists think PHP is a good language. Worse than that, the ineptitude of the technical management drives good people out of the company.
And don't get me started about the inane architecture decisions that come out of the hardware review committee.
Their completely pathetic "The Da Vinci Code" campaign on Yahoo Chess is the worst I've seen in my life. They turned all the game pieces into some nightmare caricatures that I still confuse and wrote "The Da Vince Code" in big fancy letters across the board. And no option to change back to the normal theme! I mean, I can't even tell a difference between black and white pieces without giving it some major thought, how are people supposed to play? No player I asked liked this theme and many said that they wrote to Yahoo telling them to stop this torture (and so did I, twice), but they don't care. How can they think this ad campaign is effective if everyone hates it? Bad publicity is also publicity?
Layoffs, which at least one Yahoo executive had called for, are not in the plans.
Yahoo! also announced that they expect to overtake Google, in both market share and profitability, later this month thanks to their new strategic partnership with Santa Claus. An expected deal with the Easter Bunny should enhance their second quarter results.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
The hood ornament analogy is very bad.
Like it or not, the execs control the fate of the company much more than the workers. The CEO can single handedly ruin the company - a single foot soldier cannot - this is why the person at the top gets paid the big bucks.
The key for the execs is to bring all of that coolness you describe into alignment with business goals - which is easier said than done.
You cant have good result if you allow paid to include. Paid result cant provide good quality (if they are good, you should find it in first place). If you want to monetize, just use sponsor links.
Where's Brad Garlinghouse these days? Wasn't he the darling of a nice little story some time back?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I have been a Yahoo email user for at least 7 years (or very close to that, I just can't remember).
Somehow my Inbox got screwed and that started a voyage of pain I wish not in my worst enemy.
Basically every person that replied to me thought either:
a) I was computer illiterate.
b) I was an idiot.
the tone of the messages was patronizing to the extreme and nobody seemed to be prepared to engage in trying to solve the issue.
Their last message basically confirmed that I am derranged:
> Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail.
>
> We have investigated the issue you mentioned in your email and at
> this time your account appears to be in full working order. We
> apologize for any inconvenience. If you continue to experience problems, or if
> we can be of assistance in another matter, please let us know.
>
> Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.
>
> Regards,
>
> Flora
>
> Yahoo! Customer Care
My reply:
> Thank you.
>
> I am moving to gmail already.
>
> Bye.
What a pain, but I can't take this kind of service any longer.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.