Yahoo! fires! CEO! Carol! Bartz! Carol Bartz is no longer the CEO of Yahoo!, according to a report citing sources at the company, and she has apparently confirmed the news with a brief note to company employees. The company has not yet responded to a request for comment. AllThingsD reports that chief financial officer Tim Morse has been tapped to serve as …
When I hear that stupid name, "Yahoo!" I immediately think of all the second-rate web services to which it is attached, chief amongst them being "Yahoo Groups". Sadly, certain bits of audio kit that I use have their user forums on this strictly second-rate service, and it is a real problem.
PS: Is anyone as stupid as Jerry Yang? How many businessmen can boast of having made a decision as bad as Yang did by declining Steve Ballmer's $45.5bn?
Serves him right.
only Yahoo! knew what it was actually trying to be... is it a Facebook clone, a search engine, an email company or what...????
It seems every time they "refresh" something ... Yahoo! mail or calendar or Flickr or whatever they make two steps forward and three back in usability.
The most recent example were the changes to the calendar, which lost functionality and the link to group calendars in Yahoo groups amongst other things.
Previous missteps include the whole Yahoo360 debacle and the mess they made migrating Yahoo profiles which included losing most users' data (all without warning I might add!)
At the core seems to an inability to decide just what Yahoo is about. They seem forever to be chasing the latest 'net craze and missing the boat every time.
I am not sure Carol Bartz was to blame or just unable to deal with the internal issues that cause the mess.
IMO, she did not do enough.
Once upon a time a journalist asked Gina Lolobridgida why she does not want to go to Hollywood. She answered: "There, I will be just a small frog. Here, I am still a frog, but I am a big frog in a small pond".
Frankly the decision to fire her because she does not drive the company into the shark pool with Facebook (social) and Google (search) and tries to establish a solid business in areas where there is still some competition going on is beyond genuinely stupid.
This post has been deleted by its author
"We have talented teams and tremendous resources behind them and intend to return the Company to a path of robust growth and industry-leading innovation. We are committed to exploring and evaluating possibilities and opportunities that will put Yahoo! on a trajectory for growth and innovation and deliver value to shareholders."
Corporate speak for "we're shopping the company around for whatever we can get."
"We are committed to exploring and evaluating possibilities and opportunities that will put Yahoo! on a trajectory for growth and innovation and deliver value to shareholders."
So, "we're looking for ideas that might eventually make us some money", in other words. Now there's a bold and innovative strategy for you.
I have been using (and sometimes even enjoying) some Yahoo! services for over a decade now, such as Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Movies, Yahoo! Groups, etc., and I am very nervous as to how much longer some of these services will survive with all of Yahoo!'s CEO firings, takeover bids, etc.
All this does is make me grumble in disgust every time that I read in some article or hear in some webcast how the "cloud" is the future and that everything is going to one day be hosted "in the cloud." The few Yahoo! services that I use are a good percentage of the "cloud" services that I really do use, and look what using them has gotten me-- several years of heartburn wondering if those services will still be usable or available after every site upgrade, management change, "new direction," etc., and if I will actually get a chance to migrate my data off of those services if they are ever unceremoniously axed. I still feel burned about the files that I lost when they axed Yahoo! Briefcase a few years ago-- I didn't find out that the service was being discontinued until it already had been. Trusting cloud services from other companies like Google really isn't any better. If you enjoyed services like Google Wave, Google Notebook, Google Base, and/or any of the stuff they just recently shut down with Google Labs, you are also pretty much out in the cold. You are always at the cloud service provider's mercy no matter who they are.
Getting back on topic, I sincerely hope that the management remaining at Yahoo! will somehow start to get its act together. I don't care about their "trajectory for growth" or what possibilities that they happen to be "exploring." I just want them to focus on the services that they already have, keep them working and usable, and stay financially stable enough to "keep the lights on" and keep what they currently have going in operation. They need to focus on what they already do well and really try to excel at that instead of being so envious of what they see as their neighbors' greener lawns. If in the future the Yahoo! board gambles everything that they currently have and devote all of their resources to chase some stupid new Internet fad, inevitably lose against Google or Facebook who got there first, and then in their weakened state either implode or get swallowed by someone else, I am going to be very irate. *sigh*
See what I did there?
But seriously, never heard of her. Some career advice for her, if she wants to be a successful IT CEO, she needs to get with the program and piss off as many of her customers as possible. And maybe wear a nice pastel sweater too.
Of course, Yahoo! doesn't have any customers left TO piss off...
Bartz was obnoxious when she was at Autodesk and I'm not surprised at her obnoxious parting-shot at Yahoo after being thrown $3M+ to leave. (See DailyTech link)
I for one am glad that Yahoo survives to provide decent alternatives to the Googleplex, Microsoft and other behemoths. Yang & Co may have gotten richer if they had sold out to Redmond, but the consolidation of market options would have just added to our own impoverishment.
Selling out to M$ was the dumbest thing Yahoo could ever have done. Easy to see this now but it was obvious to many prior. Anything M$ buys into dies but unfortunately it props up M$ with shareholders. So Yahoo is hearing its death knell now after once being a great company & the original online social network. Sad...
Good riddance, cow...
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
