Jerry Yang Steps Down

Jerry Yang’s return to Yahoo has been an utter failure. When Jerry assumed the reins in June 2007 it was hyped as the return of the “chief” Yahoo. The savior had returned, the one that bleeds purple would restore the company back to prominence. Boy were they wrong.

Unfortunately, the hype came and went. Jerry spent months trying to just figure out what Yahoo had become in the post Semel era. Is Yahoo a media company? or Is Yahoo a search and advertising company? I don’t think Jerry ever figured it out.

The botched Microsoft deal will go down in history as the worst played Texas Hold’em game ever played. Yang tried to bluff Microsoft to go all in for the low price of $47 billion. If Yang would have truly understood his business, he would have realized he had really no other options. Yahoo was/is being pinched by two titans with deep pockets and they are right in the middle. In the the high scale, multi billion dollar fixed cost business of search you are either fully committed or you are not in the game. Microsoft knew that Yahoo could not afford to get into an arms race with Google.

Then Yang tries to sell his soul by partnering with Google and outsourcing search and advertising. This causes a mass exodus of talented engineers and senior leadership at Yahoo. Pursuing a deal with Google basically was omitting to the world that they have lost the search and advertising game, something that was essentially their birthright. It was also a bold strategy statement, which essentially said search and advertising and its underlining technology is not one of their core competencies.

With Google bailing on the deal, spooked by the DOJ, Yahoo is left with few options. The ship continues to sink, the crew has finally mutinied, and the pirates from Redmond are just off the bow.