Comments on: An open letter to Carol Bartz on rebuilding Yahoo

Yahoo's got a lot of potential. Even though you told us all to shut up while you decide your priorities, here's some advice anyway.

[loose_screw]

Um, did you not get her memo?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10142275-93.html

"Everybody on the outside deciding what Yahoo should or shouldn't do--that's going to stop,"

[Shankland]

Yes, in fact, I wrote the story you linked to and included this in my intro to this one: "I know you requested some 'breathing room' from us nattering nabobs while you chart a new course. But it's just not in our nature to totally clam up."

She'll get a grace period, for sure, but she's not going to escape the professional pontificators. :)

[YankeePoodle]

Does that include the share-holders? Did Jerry do just that? Its not going to stop for those people who put their life investment in this company evaporate, the only solace is that they did not invest in AIG.

If there is no deal with Microsoft she will be second guessed to hell.

[Michael_Martinez]

People need to get over this bonehead idea of a Microsoft-Yahoo! deal somehow making sense. If Yahoo! were to sell out to Microsoft, or even just sell its search business, the consumer would lose a valuable major search brand.

Microsoft has already surpassed Yahoo! in estimated monthly search traffic according to Quantcast (more than 100 million Microsoft visitors compared to less than 60 million Yahoo! visitors). Microsoft doesn't need Yahoo!. Microsoft just needs to stay focused on what it's doing right because Google's monthly visitor tallies have been virtually flatlined or declining for over a year.

Yahoo! shareholders who settle for pennies on the dollar for their investments after just hiring one of the most highly qualified technology CEOs in the business deserve to lose value. Now is the time for people to stop talking about nonsense mergers or asset liquidations and start talking about how Yahoo! has a chance to get its act together and become competitive again.

[Shankland]

A couple points: First, Yahoo need not lose search even if it sold the business to Microsoft. It could pipe in search results from its former search technology and share ad revenue with Microsoft. Second, search visitors and search traffic are very different things, and Yahoo leads Microsoft by a wide margin in search quantity. The more searches, the more ads can be shown.

[mrjetsondc]

Dear Yahoo

You suck. Just go away.

Love,

Google

[nappyjim]

how anyone can find anything with live search is beyond me. even using live search to find stuff located on Microsofts own domains is horrendous.

[loose_screw]

Totally agree.

[forever4now]

It is unfortunate that the current economic climate is bad. I like Yahoo. They have some good properties and I would like to see them survive intact.

Search really is one of Yahoo's crown jewels, so giving it to Microsoft doesn't make much sense. I hope Carol Bartz can find another way to help Yahoo emerge from this successfully.

[loose_screw]

1. They need to get rid of, or at least tone down, the graphics and flash ads.

2. Invest in better spam filters for Yahoo Mail. The existing technology sucks ass.

Google excels in those two areas, and are a big reason why I use them as my preferred search and email provider.

[mattroche]

Find the ten most powerful people in the organization. The ones that make the decisions and analyze priorities.

Fire them.

[loose_screw]

LOL, well said.

[ibmrg]

From an search marketing perspective (which is probably a healthy chunk of overall revenue), there's a relatively simple thing that Yahoo can do to boost revenue....advertisers us to bid on more words. Yes, even ones that are trademarked. With Google, you can bid on trademarked terms, you just can't display them in the ad copy. Yahoo seems much stricter and doesn't typically let you bid on them at all. Advertisers are limited by their stricter editorial review. I suspect they don't realize it, but they are missing out on a HUGE chunk of revenue with their strict guidelines.

[Mergatroid Mania]

Meh...I don't really pay attention to people who use the phrase "nattering nabobs".

[flickrz]

"Too many Chiefs and not many Indians" <- This sums it all up about the state of Yahoo.

[aaydogan]

Yahoo<-----a brand in search of a product. Please, please just go away. You are nothing more than one colossal waste of resources.

[stockyjoe]

Personally I have always felt Yahoo has the content advantage. Plus people forget that YUI partially sparked all these cool new javascript libraries like jquery and its pretty powerful.

Also I'm one of those people that just find Yahoo mail more familiar and consistent, although gmails free pop is cool. So Google wins on search, but Yahoo wins on content. web services and email are a mix. Yahoo is in no way dead especially if Google thinks the regualr joe user will be drawn to minimalism which they wont.

[pobrien]

Well said flickrz
Seems the letter to new CEO is becoming commonplace
<A HREF="http://www.seobrien.com/2009/01/yahoo/a-letter-to-yahoos-carol-bartz/</A>http://www.seobrien.com/2009/01/yahoo/a-letter-to-yahoos-carol-bartz/</A>