Comments on: A force for change at Yahoo

CFO Susan Decker will take on a key advertising role next year as the suddenly wobbly company looks to get back on firm ground.

[hitsman]

Inaccurate

This statement is not accurate:
"In one example of such issues, the music services Yahoo Music and Musicmatch--a paid music service that Yahoo acquired years ago--haven't historically been under a central group's control, creating overlaps in workforce."

Yahoo! Music and MusicMatch have been managed by the same team since MusicMatch has been acquired. I know this because I am on that team.

[Dachi]

Yahoo still does not get it

I once posted on this site about how I eagerly tried to sign up for Yahoo launchcast plus as was so appalled by the behavior of the software on my machine that I canceled the service within a day of having to use it.

Not long after my post I see this story basically saying that some of the winning design decisions I loved so much with Launchcast plus ended up in messenger: http://news.com.com/Yahoos+IM+update+A+Trojan+horse+of+surprises/2100-1038_3-6144286.html

This only outlined that even as recently as 12/15/06 Yahoo is not thinking about the customer at all.

Now Yahoo is going to appoint their CFO to lead search because she has a good working relationship with wall street and might be healthy for the stock price?

This again reinforces my perspective that they are an investor-centric company, and not user-centric at all.

Her comments about Yahoo never catching Google on search are likely true, but her comments also hint that she likely has no intention of trying either.

By "focus on current users" she does not mean enhancing their experience, she means forcefully milking more from them like Yahoo messenger forcing all that is Yahoo on their PC's with or without user consent.

This behavior will grant her the short term numbers she is looking for on her next quarterly statement and improving tomorrows stock price, but it does little to sustain their long term market share and brand name.

Not that she would care anyway, if the investors cash out first they don't care, and as long as she gets get bonus and multi-million dollar severance package she does not care, she can just move on to the next company touting her impressive relationship with Wall Street and probably get a signing bonus to chace away their customers and railroad that company too.

[timoteo21]

Re: user-centric

<This again reinforces my perspective that they are an investor-
centric company, and not user-centric at all.>

In the long run, all companies serve the master who pays the
bills. In today's Internet, that is primarily investors and
advertisers. As long as consumers opt for a free ride, they will
get what they pay for.

[Broward Horne]

It wasn't "Suddenly Wobbly".

The shakeup was predictable one year ago.

Comparison of traffic for Yahoo, MSN, Google and Baidu. In general, the search engine market is probably approaching saturation and it appears to be breaking down into differentiated engines -

http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entry=search_engine_comparison

[Des Alba]

Yahoo Message Boards draw visitors

The recent cutback to support discussion on the Yahoo Message Boards has and will cost Yahoo dearly. Visitors were drawn to Yahoo and supported Yahoo for its freebies. The disappearance of the "Discuss" option has been the hot topic around many watercoolers since Dec 20th.