Wired Writes History Of Yahoo’s Bad Decisions
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | January 17, 2007 | Share This
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“At Yahoo, the marketers rule, and at Google the engineers rule. And for that, Yahoo is finally paying the price,” concludes Wired’s history lesson on How Yahoo Blew It. The 5 page diatribe analyzes the growth of Google and the strategic decisions of Yahoo from 2001 to the present, pointing out time and again how Yahoo missed the boat. Wired says that Yahoo’s failure to effectively (and quickly) implement Overture was their key point of decline, echoing statements in the infamous Peanut Butter Manifesto.
“With no clear delineations, Yahoo and Overture executives fought over turf. Yahoo hired and fired a half-dozen engineering chiefs at Overture during the first year. Overture salespeople competed for business with Yahoo salespeople. And Meisel, Overture’s CEO, was ineffective — either inept or hamstrung by bureaucracy, depending on whom you ask. Decisions big and small, from trying out new features to agreeing on budgets, had to be cleared by committee after committee in Sunnyvale. “It was a clusterfuck,” one of the participants says.”
The story, furthermore, paints a less than flattering picture of Terry Semel’s management of Yahoo: “Semel has run the company like a souped-up movie studio…His view of Yahoo’s culture has always been that technology is an important thing but not the only thing…Semel has been Yahoo’s CEO for nearly six years, yet he has never acquired an intuitive sense of the company’s plumbing.”
Though Yahoo responded to Wired’s article, their letter wasn’t much more than your average PR-Friendly whitewash: “At the end of the day, despite the challenges that existed from the start, hundreds of Yahoos across various groups and multiple continents stuck together as one team to build and deliver a platform we truly believe in. And we are extremely proud of that.”
Discussion:
- How Yahoo Missed the Boat (Search Rank Blog)
- It’s the Circle of (Web) Life! (Anil Dash)
- Yahoo vs. Google: Why Panama is the Wrong Destination (ZDNet)
- Should We Be Anticipating Yahoo’s Downfall? (10e20)
- Wired Looks at Yahoo Failures Over The Years (Search Engine Land)
Topics: Yahoo! |