No love lost from Jerry Yang when it comes to Microsoft
Yahoo may indeed agree to Microsoft's $44.6 billion bear hug, but it will be over Jerry Yang's dead body.
People familiar with Yahoo's chief executive say he "can't stand" Microsoft, which can't come as a big surprise considering the decade-long rivalry between the companies.
The "Yahoo way." That speaks volumes about why Yahoo finds itself in its current straits. In the second decade of the Internet Age, who still believes you can rely on yesterday's corporate playbook when the terrain is changing as we speak?
Back to Yang. If he hates it now, imagine how much he'll detest working inside a corporate culture where the CEO fails to command kowtowing from lesser-paid humans. Say what you like about Microsoft, but Steve Ballmer thrives when underlings get in his face and try to prove him wrong. They may trigger a confrontation, but disagreements can generate a positive dialectic where issues get (loudly) hashed out.
Not so at Yahoo where subordinates speak of Jerry the Seer with hushed reverence.
"You don't disagree with Jerry in meetings," says an informant who has participated in planning sessions with Yang and his lieutenants. "That's just not the Yahoo way."
Not that Yang's antipathy ultimately will matter. According to the most recent ownership document I found, Yang held about a 4 percent stake. That's enough to get your voice heard in any conclave, but Yang will just be one among equals when it comes to a final vote. Trust Yahoo's board to hold out for the best deal--be it from Microsoft, Google, or a still unknown bidder. At this juncture, the company's choices are to sell out or suffer a slow slide into mediocrity.
Besides, if Microsoft's bid does indeed carry the day, you won't need anyone to push Yang out. He'll head for the exits as soon as the lawyers say he legally can turn in his corporate key.
Charles Cooper has covered technology and business for more than 25 years. Before joining CNET News, he worked at the Associated Press, Computer & Software News, Computer Shopper, PC Week, and ZDNet. E-mail Charlie.
C'mon at least at MSFT they listen to employee's and like what was written in the article Steve B and other management encourage people to disgaree as that is the only way you can maintain perspective and succeed in business.
I still cannot fathom the hypocrisy of people bad mouthing this proposed takeover and saying that it will 'destroy' or inhibit the Yahoo! way or culture?
MSFT has been growing revenue and profits year after year against the naysayers and against market conditions consistently and yet Yahoo! did not take advantage of its early position and has been going backwards, so who is better for who from a monetisation and creating shareholder value perspective?
And for all the carping about MS, you can't realistically criticise a company that makes money like they do.
Maybe not forever, but right now, and for the last 15-20 odd years, they have been making money like nothing and no one else.
Microsoft has lost its innovativeness, its customer base is decreasing not increasing, its products cannot compete with Google and Apple.
Balmer is fooling himself if he thinks he can have any impact on Google's market share by purchasing Yahoo. If Microsoft was going to go anywhere Gates wouldn't have turned over the reigns to Balmer. He's cutting his "loses" and moving on while he can.
Yang is fooling himself if he thinks that Yahoo can survive under his leadership. If he was such a stellar leader why is Yahoo in the position its currently in.
If MS does buy Yahoo its going to screw it up just like it has all the other online services it has purchased because it doesn't understand online services.
MS purchasing Yahoo would be like Ford purchasing Oldsmobile. Neither one can save the other.
Microsoft grew net revenue 15% last financial year from $44.2B to $51.1B and grew net income 12% from $12.6B to $14.07B!!!! Year in and year out they have grown net revenue and profit against market conditions, competition from every direction and against all the naysayers!
This year they are spending $6.5B on R&D.
Gartner have just ranked them number 1 in the Business Intelligence solutions market, look what they did with XBOX, they will catch up and match iPod with ZUNE, Online Services revenue has been growing fast, they launched revolutionary Unified Communications solutions....I can go on and on and on.
Nobody gets Software + Services like Microsoft and unlike most naive people who think pure play consumer Online Services are the key, Microsoft's hosted Exchange, hosted CRM, hosted Communicator, Office Live and many other new services will dominate.
It never ceases to amaze me the amount of ignorant comments which are made about Microsoft and its successes. At least there is substance there.
Microsoft is not seriously looking at anything other than Search market Share and eyeballs and purchasing market share is done by all successful companies.
Any you say Balmer is fooling himself if he thinks he can have an impact on Google's market share. The only person fooling themself is you. Everyone has said and is saying the same thing. Sometimes Microsoft is late to market but once they put the money and commitment in they do succeed - XBOX case in point. Microsoft might never become number 1 in search but they will end up being a very close second and like anything related to eyeballs you can be number 1 in market share but not necessarily generating the most revenue and profit.
Cheers mate!
Suddenly on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving you are told that your hated, sleazy, lousy competitor has just bought the company. You go home, get smashed, and start updating your resume. You come back to the office on Monday to find that all the signage has been changed, you are issued new business cards, and your competitor is now the most wonderful, innovative, smartest, most honest business around. By Tuesday you've already forgotten how to spell the old CEOs name. Dirwood? Dagwood? Durbin? Something like that.
Funny I read that as "No love lost from YAHOO shareholders when it comes to Jerry Yang."
So why is MSFT so eager to go into debt (for the first time in the
corporation's history) to buy Yahoo again?
/P
1) It assumes that they can start right away moving forward. Because Yahoo! does not already operate on a Microsoft platform, the direction for a combined company would be sideways for several quarters, as they either migrate Yahoo! to .net infrastructure or they scrap it and move it to MSN.
2) It assumes that the good Yahoo! engineers will stick around. They may not like Google, but they don't like Microsoft any better, and it would be surprising if they were willing to endure Microsoft's bureaucracy.
3) It assumes that the users will stick around. My wife and I have had Yahoo! accounts since shortly after they started offering logins. However, if Microsoft takes control, we'll in all likelihood move to GMail.
No migration is required on day 1. Microsoft's only religion is money - just the way it should be. .NET is a method not a end. MSFT has bought Unix businesses before. Hotmail is a good example.
There are ways to keep the engineers around long enough. The Tx will take a LONG time to settle and they will have to be performance benchmarks on both sides.
I don't think MSFT needs YAHOO at this price, but I think the Tx will happen at few more dollars/share.
Besides, the average Yahoo! network visitor will not even notice that ownership has changed.
The place will be a ghost town in 3-5 minutes.
None of the Microsoft people will know what BSD is. Servers will start failing and the MSFT engineers will be as helpless as junior high school kids from Redmond trying to operate a Chinese nuclear submarine.
The customers who already hate Microsoft will leave in droves to Gmail, Excite, MyWay or scores of other loser portals. Baller will be left in an empty building, screaming and throwing chairs while a few of the Redmond people stand helplessly by, shaking and trying not to soil their undies. The code time-bombs left behind by Yahoo! Microsoft-hating engineering staff will take the entire operation down with 24 hours and reduce the server infrastructure to scrap iron. Ballmer will be arrested chasing Google buses on Route 101 screaming obscenities and threats against Eric Schmidt.
- Jerry will sell out and...
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by riffkind
February 12, 2008 2:23 PM PST
- ...he'll become an even bigger hero than he is now, thanks to MSFT.
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