Yahoo!’s embattled CEO Terry Semel has been given the boot, a development that is somehow as shocking as it was predictable. He’ll serve as non-executive Chairman of the company while co-founder Jerry Yang steps into the CEO role and Sue Decker, long-time CFO and recently EVP and head of the advertiser and publisher group, moves up to President.
But don’t look for things to get better. For one thing, Yahoo’s press release announcing this set of developments is symptomatic of a company out of touch with reality. The way Yahoo! is spinning the unsatisfactory executive shuffle: “Yang and Decker to Focus on Realizing Yahoo!’s Strategic Vision by Accelerating Execution, Further Strengthening Leadership and Fostering a Culture of Winning .”
Say what? They can’t spin their way out of this one by pretending that Semel’s ouster and Yang’s elevation will “further strengthen leadership.” I had to laugh, and then got a little insulted, when I read this ludicrous happy-happy talk. Valleywag had the same reaction:
This attempt to spin, in the most desperate of situations, isn’t clever; it’s pathetic, and emblematic of a company still in deep denial about its defeat by Google. Further strengthening leadership? Well, maybe, if the Sunnyvale internet company had a great chief exec hire to announce.
Not only does Yahoo!’s strangely confident-sounding press release fail to reassure, it actually raises doubts in my mind about the company’s ability to survive. What Yahoo! is doing is engaging in “as-if” behavior, one classic sign of a dysfunctional group, whether it be a family or a huge corporation. Apparently Yahoo! thinks that if it can just pretend “as if” this were a good thing, we’d all buy it.
Now, most companies are inherently hotbeds of dysfunction, with internal politics and constant one-upmanship turning the collective group of people into one big unhappy family. But Yahoo! seems to be particularly bad off, as evidenced by not only this recent development but also by a damning “manifesto” written by a Yahoo! SVP last year, which was leaked to the press. This infamous “peanut butter” memo accused the company of lacking focus, vision, clarity of ownership and accountablity, decisiveness and a passion to win.
Clearly, in addition to these flaws, Yahoo! also now suffers from either denial or a belief that it can pull the wool over everybody’s eyes. Over the past two years the company has undergone two major reorganizations that resulted in the loss of many top executives, including the company’s long-time COO.
Last summer Yahoo! shook up Wall Street by warning that its revenue growth had gone soft. The company’s controversial Project Panama, Yahoo!’s new saving-grace ad platform, was subject to repeated delays.
All the while Yahoo! (and Semel) were lambasted by the press and rejected by investors. I’d say it’s going to take a corporate management genius to turn things around at Yahoo! but instead Jerry Yang (who was quite happy in his previous hands-off position, or so I recall reading) is running the show, for now anyway.
All of these things are huge indicators that Yahoo! is beset by serious, potentially fatal problems. You’d think that some official acknowledgment of Yahoo!’s desperate need of a turn-around would show up in the official pronouncements. That nod toward reality, however oblique, would have given folks at least some reassurance that Yahoo! is dealing with its problems.
About six months ago I wondered if Yahoo! isn’t too “mature” to survive the rough and tumble new Internet business. Now I wonder if Yahoo! isn’t too dysfunctional to survive much longer.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:19 PM | Print | Comments (0)Whatever you think of David Chase’s weird ending to “The Sopranos,” there’s no denying that the final song, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin,” was a catchy, slightly kitschy choice of music. So catchy that one might be tempted to buy into the theory that Chase’s bizarre final scene was in fact a giant practical joke.
Here’s supporting evidence that “The Soprano’s” finale was designed to mess with our minds: One problem I’ve had since watching the final episode is the continued looping in my head of that iconic 80’s power ballad. It seems I’m not alone, although most people have been hearing it through their ears and not through their imaginations. Radio airplay of the tune jumped 192% in the four days following the final episode, while downloads of the song via iTunes rocketed 482% in the two days following that episode.
Surprisingly, this sudden burst of popularity for the song has happened several times before when it was used on MTV’s “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County,” Fox’s “The Family Guy” and “Scrubs.”
The surge in demand, however, will die down as memories of “The Sopranos” controversial concluding chapter fade away. Let’s hope the continued replay of the song in my head also fades away.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:30 PM | Print | Comments (1)In a move that is generating more press than it should, Microsoft has renamed its IPTV (interactive TV software for telcos, basically) platform Microsoft Mediaroom. At the U.S. telephone industry’s giant annual show NXTcomm, Microsoft is unveiling new enhancements to what was formerly its “IPTV Edition” of its set-top-based interactive TV software.
Most of the enhancements, it seems, center on the platform’s greater ability to manage digital terrestrial TV signals. The rest of the features being touted — picture-in-picture, whole-house media sharing and multiple camera angle viewing — have been part of the Microsoft TV package for years.
The problem with Microsoft’s interactive TV products is that few multichannel video providers actually like them. Cable operators have implemented only token launches of the software giant’s TV system and phone companies, from AT&T and Verizon in the U.S. to Swisscom in Europe, privately and sometimes not-so-privately grumble about dealing with Microsoft’s clunky software.
Although little-noted, Verizon’s impressive new FiOS TV software is a product that the telco basically developed itself, despite initially tapping Microsoft for the job.
And yet, and yet…year-in and year-out since around 1998, Microsoft has managed to stay in the interactive TV software game. Even with its snazzy new name, Mediaroom, Microsoft is likely to make little headway with this IPTV platform. Unless I’m missing something, it’s just old wine in a new bottle and most TV providers probably still won’t drink it.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:33 AM | Print | Comments (0)Google unveiled this morning a policy blog, a long overdue move that nonetheless puts Google ahead of most communications and tech companies. In the first main public post, Google Director of Public Policy and Government Affairs Andrew McLaughlin said that the goal of the blog is to help officials “enact sound government policies to foster free expression, promote economic growth, expand access to information, enable innovation, and protect consumers.”
Google joins Cisco and Verizon in the serious policy blogging game. Despite the stated desire to do public policy in a “Googley way,” Google, like the other companies with policy blogs, probably won’t say much that isn’t scripted — that would just be bad politics.
But, it’s nice to see yet another major communications company use this powerful tool of political communications in the 21st Century.
Update: The folks at Verizon’s Poliblog have welcomed Google to the communications and tech policy blogosphere. Google and Verizon don’t always see eye-to-eye, particularly when it comes to net neutrality, but maybe, just maybe, thoughtful dialog (ha!) will bring these two sometimes-adversaries closer.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:45 AM | Print | Comments (1)
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