Yahoo CEO Speaks Up about Shake Up

cvos writes "Yahoo has been under fire recently. The common wisdom is that they are losing marketshare to Google, and now MSN. Many executives have departed in the last few weeks, and Yahoo has received a lot of unfavorable press. Their CEO let out a (unintentional) personal and heated response to media critics." From the article: "At the next all-hands. Just as a reminder. I'm sorry I didn't do it today. I'm gonna put up there all of the press reports on how Yahoo! was going out of business 5 years ago. And of how we were gonna be swallowed up by AOL, owned by Time-Warner, and by Microsoft, and by everybody else. And Yahoo! looked like it had a dim future. Well those headlines, of course, were used to wrap a lot of fish in a lot of people's houses, as the expression goes. And they were all full of [expletive deleted], and they had no idea what we had planned for them. And they do not now as well!"

Comments

Fish Wrappers

[brunes69]

He's talking about the practice of calling shoddy newspapers (like the National Enquirer, The Weekly World News, etc) "fish wrappers", because they are good for nothing but wrapping fish in.

If you didn't know because you don't frequent a market - when you buy fish at a live market, it's common practice to give it to the customer wrapped in newspaper. I don't know why exactly, maybe it absorbs the smell or something.

His last ditch effort

[Salvance]

Sounds like he didn't get the memo yet that he's been canned.

CEOs always beat their chests and yell the loudest when they're on their way out. Yahoo's newest "strategy" is junk, and they need some fresh leadership at the top, rather than just getting rid of all his subordinates who have worked their tails off to follow an ill-thought prior strategy.

Give the guy a break

[diskofish]

Give the guy a break. Sure he is being a little brash, but don't we all get the chance to do that every now and then? Instead, why not find a news worthy subject to report on instead of someone's comment from an internal meeting?

We should actually insert expletives

[Timesprout]

I've heard our strategy described as spreading [shit] across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of [shit] spread across everything we do and thus we [shit] on nothing in particular. I hate [shit]. We all should.

Some of the stuff emanating from Yahoo recently (Peanut butter memo) actually makes more sense with expletives inserted.

And so the executive proves the rumors

[Omnifarious]

That memo exemplifies everything I see wrong at Yahoo form my external vantage point. It's substanceless internal boosterism. "We're great! We're really great! I can't say exactly why we're great, but this is a fantastic company and all the rumors of our imminent death are premature because we're great!"

So, what exactly does Yahoo do, precisely, that's so great? Anything? I certainly haven't seen anything mentioned that they do at all well aside from possibly their financial stuff.

Re:And so the executive proves the rumors

[dhuv]

1. I think what he was angry about is that people are speculating about his company without knowing enough about whats going on inside it. Now I know that's what speculation is, but it obviously offended him because they have been saying these things in the past and never coming true. What probably upset him was that other people actually listen to these people who have a track record of bad guessing.

2. I don't know why people think that in order to be a successful profitable company, it has to be the best at something. There are lots of companies that are not the BEST but are still making money. In the end, that's what matters right? There is lots of money to be made even if you are #2 or #3. Perfect example is Wii. I am sure Nintendo will make more money off their Wii than either Sony or Microsoft.

can anyone tell me

[JustNiz]

what yahoo actually does that isn't done better by someone else or just totally redundant?
To me they seem to be a sort of second AOL.

Re:TV

[rolfwind]

Is Yahoo also be falling behind Gmail in their webbased mail client (in terms of "customers")?

In order to catch up to Gmail, they had a new interface available in Beta for a while, but IMO it's worse than the original.

And there My Yahoo page is something I configured once and never used again because it was faster searching for the info I want. Maybe they're still stuck with the internet portal idea from the 90s, which itself probably got inspired by AOL or some such.

Duh

[Lord_Dweomer]

Not knocking the guy, he has a responsibility to the shareholders that he is appeasing...but lets say for example that Yahoo really didn't have big plans up its sleeve and was in trouble, would he really be saying anything different?

What Have You Yahoo'ed For Me Lately?

[Doc Ruby]

What has Yahoo done for the past 5 years to stay alive? Certainly nothing to justify the vast money it raised in the stock market to date, defining the 1990s dotcom Bubble.

Yahoo search is great, though

[melted]

Their index is larger than Google's and I find that their results are not much worse than Google's most of the time. When I can't find something through Google, I go to Yahoo and it usually finds it. Their index of images seems larger as well. What keeps me with Google right now is Gmail, super fast personalized homepage, Groups and the habit.