Comments on: Now it's all on Jerry Yang's shoulders

If Yahoo CEO's gambit fails, he's gone. If it succeeds, he'll be feted as the second coming of Lou Gerstner.

[Sumatra-Bosch]

It's really not about the math.

Yang's an old Lotus Development guy and he knows corporate culture is the real make or break aspect of any takeover. He also has experienced first hand the gangland tactics of MSFT while at Lotus and no doubt would not wish its horrific culture of humiliation on his own.

In the event of a MSFT takeover, Yahoo! most likely would collapse from catastrophic wholesale abandonment by 90-99% of the staff who may or may not plant logic bombs in the companies networks to leave MSFT a pile of smoldering iron.

Icahn is a tortured guy but he should be able to understand that asking Yahoo's people to work for MSFT is like asking the surviving members of the Tate Labianca families to go to a dinner party hosted by Charles Manson.

[WJeansonne]

Hey Sumo-Botch:

You think Microsoft is a gangster? Wait til you see how effective Icahn is at handling inept and rogue CEOs, lol. You ain't seen nothing yet. That lawsuit Monday was the shot across the bow. The next will be a direct hit against Yang and his cohorts.

[robvme]

Yang is an idiot. Does anyone really believe Microsoft really wanted Yahoo? The distraction created by all of this was a stroke of genius and a well crafted maneuver playing off of Jerry's dislike of Microsoft, his weak performance as CEO, and the vunerable position that Yahoo is in. As for what Yahoo employees think, well, they are all probably feeling pretty uncertain about their futures, the direction of the company, and what their next job may look like in an economy that is not very robust in an area where realestate is expensive yet values have dropped out. If I worked for Yahoo, I would probably be submitting my resume to Microsoft. Culture of a company is only as good as the pay check. Yahoo employees aren't there for some higher cause or for charity. I think Sumatra's comments above are dead wrong and emotional, sort of how Jerry runs Yahoo.

[UStraveler]

First of all, Yang (Yahoo) was VERY smart for acquiring Overture... Without it, they would not own their own SEARCH ENGINE -- remember, Overture owned AltaVista and Yahoo was just a Portal (or DIRECTORY) on the internet. Next, Yang was SMART to push Microsoft away... If memory serves me well, Microsoft used to use Google (and before that AltaVista) to run its search results before they decided to trip over their own engineers to try to build a search engine -- and both times, Microsoft FAILED...

As for Yang taking back control, I know several things he could do to take Search Traffic away from Google and Microsoft... The only question is: Will he?

This is more of a: "If up to Yahoo to loose", than a: "How can they turn the market around".

As for Microsoft, they have another option in the Search market they haven't even considered... But, I think I'll wait a little while before I open my mouth on this subject...

Rock on Jerry..

[bobr]

The true measure of success for any CEO is tied to the task for which they were hired. Tim Koogle was hired by Yahoo specifically to bring enough maturity, wisdom and decorum to the company to enable it to go public. Tim succeeded! The current fiasco with Microsoft should provide enough evidence of a fundamental problem at Yahoo that would drive any good CEO out. I don't know Terry Semel but please don't put Tim down as anything but a winner.

Side comment, there comes a time when 99% of all successful companies outgrow the capabilities and temperament of their founders. Some know when to leave gracefully.