The Mind of Alex

I know that you probably do not enjoy annual meetings of companies. These meetings for even the hottest company can easily be surpassed on the excitement scale by watching paint dry while blindfolded competitions. Yahoo’s recent annual meeting was nothing of the sort if you read between the lines. Fortunately both Businessweek and the WSJ liveblogged the whole deal a few days ago. After reading and comparing notes from the around the internet, we have the dirty bits for you to read.

Let’s start with search: Yahoo is screwed. Quick, what does BOSS stand for? Yeah, I thought so. That is one of Yahoo’s largest pushes on the search front Carol Bartz (CEO) brought up. Even more, Yahoo will not be working with Google on search, period. Something about the government disliking the move. Or put more carefully: we are not in a position to fight this, and Google is not going to pick a fight with regulators over a deal with us. We are alone, and our search offerings will continue to be third rate.

In regards to the small and unused bits of the Yahoo-verse that waste money, Carol called them “space debris,” and discussed their shutdown. Focus seems to be her game, and she ran the meeting like she was the goddamn boss. Shockingly enough from a CEO, but after the Yang debacle having a real leader feels wonderful.

Lover her of hate her, she is a straight shooter. In regards to the possibility of MSFT deal, she said (paraphrase) “we are not going to tell you until the deal is complete.” Damn, that is hard to argue back to. Not even a hint if she wanted the deal or not, just “shut up, trust me, and I will get back to you.” Carol apparently has a firm grip on how to manage this sort of meeting, once again fixing a Yang problem.

All in all, the Yahoo meeting gave me a single impression: they do not get it. They need to focus on building a core search product that function, and a better advertising vehicle to monetize it. Following, cull the masses of their projects (Carol does get this, but the company will probably hate the change), and focus on two things: reach and profits. Carol seems brilliant so far, but she did not seem to hit a new vision as hard as a critique of the past. Saying “we have an execution problem,” is a good step. But it does little remedy it.