Let me be clear about this just in case my clever headline makes no sense: I think the Yahoo board punted by hiring Scott Thompson, who is either a stooge for Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang or a convenient placeholder until the company can be sold.
I have nothing against Thompson, who did an able, if very vanilla, job at PayPal, but there is nothing — nothing — that distinguishes him as a new media executive. With a wildly dysfunctional outfit like Yahoo, he’ll be in over his head from the first day. I hope for his sake there’s a golden parachute rip cord available for pulling.
His best hope — and it isn’t much of a hope — is that Jerry Yang has come to his senses and at least gives Thompson good orders to follow.
You can’t blame Thompson for wanting to take the top job at, as he calls it, an iconic company. Nor can you blame him for thinking he can turn Yahoo around. But I can blame the Yahoo board all day and night for being a roomful of bozos.
Shareholders should throw out the entire Yahoo board.
Yahoo? What does Yahoo ACTUALLY do? What is their product? And who actually cares anymore? I don’t – do you? – or – DoYouYahoo?
See ya! Bye Bye! DotCom relic…..
Junk email, groups that are actually somewhat useful, and a screen-load of bad examples in web design. My wife is in several of the groups for things like home schooling and our CSA and they provide needed functionality (through a poor interface) for sharing docs and rolling up digests of forums and emails. But the rest of Yahoo has been dated and muddled for ten years or longer.
What does Yahoo *do*? They run Flickr. All the rest is gone or hopelessly broken.
Is Yahoo a technology or a media company?
It’s a garbage email dumping ground for me (something to give companies so they won’t SPAM my real address), and little else. And that huge, invasive, bullsh*t IM client that now plasters itself all over Yahoo! Mail and can’t be turned off is just about to make me abandon Yahoo! even for garbage email collecting.
> a technology or a media company?
A tedia company.
(Plural of tedium, mayhaps. Little Latin, no Greek).
Shareholders should band together publicly and threaten the board to resign [immediately] or they’ll dump their shares en masse.
Reading between the lines I get the impression Bob doesn’t think this was a good move.
Short Yahoo! Sure way to make some $$$.
Just visited their hompage to have a peek, still the noisy bloated mess it was whenI stopped using it when google came along.
Definition of insanity, doing the same thing and hoping for a different outcome.
Shoulda bought google when you had a chance, shoulda sold to MS, shoulda, woulda, coulda
I use Yahoo for email. I also use their search now and again. I find that while Google is excellent, sometimes you want to see different results and the likes of Bing and Yahoo give that variety.
If we all become too dependent on Google we’ll miss what Google misses, or worse we’ll only consume that which Google wishes us to consume. Be warned.
Try DuckDuckGo. They combine results from a number of search engines. And find ways to make it even better.
I just switched to DuckDuckGo because of their privacy policies.
I split my email, search etc among different companies. It’s bad enough when women on a second date seem to know me better than I know myself…
Since when are shareholders allowed to have any actual influence over a company?
So, I’m trying to figure out what the prediction is. Yahoo will continue to lose value? Thompson won’t last a year? Tivo will be able to buy Yahoo? Shareholders revolt?
“Hope… Jerry Yang … gives Thompson good orders to follow”
Jerry Yang and common sense do not mix. This clown (Yang) is an arrogant tech nerd, not an executive, not a leader. Most of the ground troops at Yahoo hate the smug bastard. Larry Page is qualified to lead; Yang is qualified to make stir-fry.
Thompson looks doughy & weak. Time to start wallpapering the house with Yahoo stock certificates, at least they’re good for something.
“to make stir-fry”? Wow, that’s a pretty racially incendiary comment.
quintessal Yahoo! moment… bought a Super Bowl ad. hired a singer to yodel Ya-HoooOOOO at the end of it. got press.
“woo, we’re big-time now! everybody talks about our Super Bowl ad! woot!”
so they bought a bunch of other ads. with one little fault that somehow the ad agency missed… they hired the singer for a one-off. no residual rights to the yodel. got sued. paid off big.
that’s their business model. screw up and pay big-time doing it. because we’re Yahoo! and we’re hot.
not.
dump spammy spammy spam there if you want, but never invest there.
I use Yahoo! email for now, though with all the talk about selling it – especially to Microsoft – I am moving up my plans to move to my own e-mail server under my own domain, and away from Yahoo! as I do not want to support Microsoft in any manner.
Of course, Yahoo! aided that move by dropping GeoCities (which I used for years for a small personal website) as well, and setting up my own e-mail server and domain also benefits me by being able to put up that little website again, only this time more personal and professional. (Yes, I know I can get another one if I would pay them for it; but again the whole sale to Microsoft things comes up…)
I haven’t used Yahoo! search period since Microsoft stuck Bing behind it; I use to use it on occasion as an alternative to Google, but nevermore.
And beyond those two products and their web portal (that I get compliments of them), what is Yahoo!? I don’t find the web portal very useful other than getting news – which I can do just as easily with RSS feeds to different news sites.
So what is there about Yahoo! that makes for a compelling reason to stay other than that I’ve had the same e-mail address with them since 1999? Sadly, not much any longer thanks to a lot of their boneheaded, cost-cutting moves.
What is a Yahoo! CEO: not Terry Semel, not Carol Bartz, not Jerry Yang II, not Tim Koogle?
Maybe its Yahoo! is not Google. Amazon or Oracle.
etymology of yahoo on Yahoo! deriving name (wikipedia): : “rude, unsophisticated, uncouth.”
what about Pipes? do they still operate pipes? that is quite a useful tool.
Yahoo! is the email address I use to sign up for memberships, newsletters, and rewards programs. Expendable.
They’re like your first college girlfriend/boyfriend: fond memories, but you’re way past that now.
LOL! That’s exactly how I feel about Hotmail
Yahoo’s finance site is way better then googles in terms of content and exportability of historical data.
So I guess Jerry’s retirement means Thompson is there until they can sell.
I’m still mad at them for their portal losing all my links. I used to use them as my “go to” place from any old computer. I didn’t have to remember those links. Now, since they lost them all, I still can’t remember all those links. So I’m mad at them for my stupidity.
Hey there. I noticed your blog title, “I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Prediction 6: Thompson’s no Yahoo – Cringely on technology” does not really reflect the content of your web site. When writing your site title, do you believe it’s best to write it for Search engine marketing or for your visitors? This is one thing I’ve been battling with due to the fact I want great search rankings but at the same time I want the best quality for my website visitors.
Buy a top Quality of Coast Dress is a necessary thing!When you have a dinner or a party, you must wear a coast fashion,because it only let you feel comfortable, and also can let you Become the most dazzling star of this part! Introduce a coast maxi for you, it is hot coast sale at the coast stores!Its special design makes you look like very fashionable,and elegance to be together with popular element,Trust me!
From time to time, beats by dre find that even with no beats by dre studio router, they’re still picking up a wireless signal. that is the price we could accept about louis items, their wireless alerts may be broadcasting via your louis vuitton men bags space. An answer here might be ask the neighbor to show off the facility to their router before they go to mattress, to your monster beats by dre studio and theirs. the dr dre headphone features simple silver trim and closely resembles the classic handset style beats by dre solo is known for and for those who crave a little louis vuitton shoulder bags and more colour. As a common rule, limit cell cheap beats by dre phone usage, particularly lengthy calls.Driving for hours can really be boring so having some louis vuitton denim entertainment could really help to break the louis vuitton monogram handbags monotony. Think movies or music or crayons and drawing pads, even books!
firma emailkan oprettesher…
[…]I, Cringely » Blog Archive Prediction 6: Thompson's no Yahoo – Cringely on technology[…]…
affiliate marketing expert, affiliate marketing blog, affliate marketing…
[…]I, Cringely » Blog Archive Prediction 6: Thompson's no Yahoo – I, Cringely – Cringely on technology[…]…
Bệnh trĩ…
[…]I, Cringely » Blog Archive Prediction 6: Thompson's no Yahoo – I, Cringely – Cringely on technology[…]…
Ten mien Viet Nam…
[…]I, Cringely » Blog Archive Prediction 6: Thompson's no Yahoo – I, Cringely – Cringely on technology[…]…
Ich glaube, die Fakten in Ihrem Zuschreibung geschrieben ist wirklich super. Ich habe seit der Arbeit auf einer vorläufigen Analyse Mission zu diesem Thema und Ihr Weblog wirklich mit einer Vielzahl von Überlegungen, die ich hatte geholfen. Ich erstelle eine Hausarbeit für die Schule und ich? M folgen derzeit viele Blogs für die Bewertung.
I believe the facts written within your write-up is really superb. I’ve been doing work on a preliminary analysis mission regarding this topic and your weblog really helped with numerous considerations that I had. I’m creating a term paper for school and I?m currently following many blogs for assessment.