NY Times as Yahoo Armchair CEO for Jerry Yang

The New York Times columnist Joe Nocera gives Jerry Yang a good talking down to in this week's "Talking Business" column titled, "Oh Jerry, It’s No Longer Your Baby". Lots of smug armchair CEO pretend-you-know-best blather here. Nocera may believe he understands search - but his expertise is corporate business affairs.

While it may seem like a sort of fun exercise in word play which treats a major CEO as a poor dumb shortsighted child, it is far more powerful when published in an International publication like the New York Times.Yang could be ousted by the board Monday morning because Nocera has verbally abused him (and therefore Yahoo) on that very big stage. So while Jerry can take his billions and retire comfortably as suggested in the column - Nocera can grin and gloat that he spoke his mind.

Yahoo search may be brought to it's knees if they have yet another leadership change before they can get down to business accomplishing all the things initiated under Yang in the past year since he took over for Terry Semel. I've liked what I've seen since Yang took over (despite the massive distraction of fending off Microsoft for 5 months). Give the man some time to implement those ideas and prove the value of his new initiatives.

I've said here on several occasions that I believe the new Yahoo Open Strategy (YOS) will have a hugely positive effect on the company and strongly believe that the new "Social" Yahoo is promising beyond all previous initiatives there.

Now that Ballmer and company have stopped, we can only hope that the proxy fight promised by Icahn will be dropped and if smug columnists who would run a major corporation remotely from their office 3000 miles away would back off and stay out of the mix - perhaps Jerry could do his job.

I see YOS as the best hope for massive success for Yahoo and not one person at Microsoft, nor nasty corporate raiders, nor smug columnists has any concept of how powerful an idea it is. They need to stop trying to bomb and burn down the house of Yahoo and give Jerry some space.

Microsoft / Yahoo Merger Off: Ballmer Walks Away

Well, it's over, thank goodness. Microsoft has walked away from their unsolicited bid for Yahoo. Whew! Deep sigh of relief from many Yahoo senior employees. But predictions are for an ugly day on Wall Street for Yahoo Monday morning - with a potential return by Microsoft with a lower bid after Yahoo tanks in the markets.

It's frustrating to those of us who love search to watch this epic battle, knowing that Microhoo may yet emerge from the burning embers. I commented in my last post that the Yahoo Open Strategy announced by Ari Balogh last week at Web 2.0 introduced some exciting prospects for the future of search if they can successfully pull it off and Microsoft doesn't win the merger through a lower offer and proxy battle. Well nobody has even commented in the news about the effect the YOS could have, not even Microsoft.

Maybe I'm way off base with this one, but I'm going to stick to my assertions until we see how this all shakes out. If Yahoo survives to stand on it's own and can put together the strategy for opening up their entire network to developers in a sweeping move like they've outlined - I predict that Yahoo could overtake Google in two years - but only if Google stands still and watches - which is not likely either.

Danny Sullivan has an excellent analysis and commentary on the Microsoft / Yahoo / Microhoo battle. I'm surprised that he didn't bring up Yahoo Open Strategy either - is it because nobody expects them to survive to see where that could take them? What if the merger happened - would Ballmer nix YOS?

I'm no Yahoo fan. I've disliked their strategy for years, I hate how they buy up companies and then kill them off or let them die within Yahoo, I can't believe they didn't leverage GeoCities and Yahoo Groups to become a social networking leader. I'm astonished that they aren't more profitable than they are because they emphasize monetization above audience satisfaction and utility. (Yahoo mail still doesn't allow pop access unless you pay for it when gmail allows this access, even using imap.) So I don't use my Yahoo mail account except to log in to the few services I use like MyBlogLog, Yahoo Groups and Flickr.

The public seems completely uninterested in the whole thing if Google Trends is any indication. The chart showing searches for the story and news stories seem to drive little interest. (click to enlarge)

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Well - I will once again throw out a cautious cheer for Yahoo and hope that they survive the Wall Street rollercoaster to pursue Yahoo Open Strategy as it is their best hope for a true contribution to search. Without YOS - it's over for Yahoo IMHO.

Yahoo Open Strategy a Volley Against Microsoft?

Yahoo announced last week at the Web 2.0 conference that they are opening up their entire network to developers to build apps and mashups. The announcement was covered by Greg Sterling for SearchEngineLand and the brief 14 minute announcement and explanation by Yahoo CTO Ari Baolgh has been covered by very well by Michael Arrington at TechCrunch. There's also a wonderfully prescient view from Loren Baker at SearchEngineJournal - from a YEAR ago, which he looks at again in the light of Yahoo announcements this past week.

Here's a video of the Ari Baolgh Web 2.0 Keynote presentation, thanks to Yahoo Video:

I got to attend a later, Friday Web 2.0 presentation titled "Yahoo! and Open Platforms, A Deeper Dive by Yahoo Chief Architect of Platforms, Neal Sample, who delivered as promised with a presentation on how the whole Yahoo Network, including Yahoo Mail, Flickr, Answers, etc. all get reworked and rejiggered to make this one massive Social experiment.

I've taken a look elsewhere at the Y!OS or Yahoo Open Strategy idea through the lens of privacy concerns this may raise for the 500 Million claimed Yahoo users.

But privacy issues aside here, this announcement could truly gain Yahoo an increased bid from Microsoft now that the MSFT deadline for a response from Yahoo has come and gone this past weekend. Watching the video above, one has to imagine Balogh seeing this as a presentation directly to Microsoft and picturing the camera as Steve Ballmer - the video being made available first to Michael Arrington at TechCrunch (hmmm what Yahoo strategy!), who put it well in his coverage, saying:

They still, of course, have to actually launch this massive project - for now it’s all ideas and vaporware. And no one knows what Microsoft thinks of all this, or what happens to YOS if that deal is done.

Now let's see how the press reacts Monday morning and what noises Microsoft makes in light of these Yahoo announcements. Microsoft invested $240 Million in Facebook not long after they announced a much smaller scale "Open" strategy, that's the same Facebook which is not even participating in the Google Open Social model - but Yahoo is participating and - one might argue - leading in this monstrous experiment that must have Microsoft groaning in agony.

Microsoft, open? They gotta hate this Yahoo Open Strategy (YOS) idea. Google moves to undermine Microsoft on Google Docs, Yahoo moves to undermine Microsoft takeover bid by open-sourcing their entire network (hmmm what Yahoo strategy!).

Despite my privacy concerns, I'm excited at what this may mean for search in general - not just for Yahoo - but for the web and how search works. I've been critical of Yahoo for their massive acquisitiveness in the past and have never understood how they failed to take advantage of their massive audience to become a social networking leader (Geocities anyone?).

This is big and I can't imagine how this could fail to evolve search and social media. It will affect everyone if they pull it off successfully and if Microsoft doesn't screw it all up for them with a proxy battle and eventual win.

I never could have imagined myself in a position to cheer for Yahoo, but I may ... I just may. ;-)