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Let’s file this one under “It’s About Time”. Yesterday, Yahoo! announced that CEO Terry Semel will be stepping down and will be replaced with founder Jerry Yang. This comes as no surprise as Semel has been on the hot seat for some time as Yahoo! continues to flounder with no real direction or purpose.
What I found interesting was there were a number of articles that discussed how Semel bet on content while Google focused on technology and many authors believed Semel’s bet was a failure. I disagree. I think Semel’s plan was actually the right one. Yahoo! was never going to be able to compete with Google from a technology aspect, but because of the great number of properties and partnerships Yahoo! has, they could compete from a content perspective.
Semel’s problem was not his formula, but his execution. Semel is a Hollywood veteran and I just don’t think he ever truly understood that you cannot run an Internet company the same way he ran a movie studio. As most of you know, the internet moves at much greater speeds than areas in the offline world. If you want to compete, you need a great sense of urgency and the ability to understand what users want and give it to them the first time, on-time and correctly.
I have never seen under Semel’s reign any kind of urgency from Yahoo! across all of their properties. We can look at numerous examples including the much delayed release of Panama, the slow and incredibly poor launches and integrations of Yahoo! Mail, Flickr and most recently MyBlogLog.
I still do not think it is too late for Yahoo! They still have a stable of great properties, they just need a real leader to get the company and personnel back on track again.
One last thing, Jerry Yang posted a letter on the Yahoo! blog. I particularly liked this line, ” A Yahoo! that executes with speed, clarity and discipline.” I guess we will see.
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Technorati Tags: Yahoo!, Terry Semel, Jerry Yang, Google
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I wouldn’t worry too much for him.. a nice $70M-$90M parachute just opened up. As for his accomplishments at Yahoo.. well lets just say they were not as successful as his Lethal Weapon movies.
David - Good question, what has made more his lethal weapons movies or Yahoo during the time he was in charge?
I have just severed all premium accounts due to incompetence and end-user account siphoning at Yahoo. I don’t have a lot of attaboys for Yahoo after more than ten years of allegiance. I am so disappointed in Terry Semel and other executive’s involvement (ever) with Yahoo that I am finished with Yahoo as an end user and stock investor…and any connection whatsoever…as long as I can get them to release strangle holds on my credit cards registered with them in confidence. What a mistake that is. These guys will do anything to preserve their thievery!