AfterDawn: Tech news

Former Yahoo exec says their success was "built on false premises"

Written by Rich Fiscus @ 02 Nov 2011 6:03 User comments (2)

Former Yahoo exec says their success was "built on false premises"

As Yahoo continues to search for a plan to return to their former glory, one former company executive explained why that's not going to happen.
The company, he says, was never really that great. According to him, they were always destined to fail because they didn't plan for the future.

The executive, whom they identify only as "a former executive from Yahoo's last great era," told Business Insider the company's decline in recent years is the result of a lack of vision at the top.

He characterized Yahoo's success as a direct result of bad judgement by decision makers at other companies, saying:

The internet blew up and people were paying ridiculous sums of money to advertise on Yahoo. I remember doing this deal with Barnes and Noble, we did this 30 million dollar deal over 3 years, and they just thought they had to be there. The reality is everybody was paying too much money to be a part of Yahoo back in the go-go days. We were generating revenues that were built on false premises.




According to this unnamed executive, Yahoo failed to plan for the future and only made a half hearted effort to develop new products. This kept them from expanding into new markets the way Google has.

As evidence, he cited the success being enjoyed by former Yahoo employees like LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and Microsoft Online Services President Qi Lu:

Yahoo had a lot of really good people who are now doing a lot of great things all over the place. They never really gave those people the investment and the resources they needed to really go for it in any of their respective areas.

Previous Next  

2 user comments

12.11.2011 19:23

makes sense

24.11.2011 13:31

damn they cost me alot of $ in the stock market back in 2008. i was betting on the ms<->yahoo merger.
FAIL

Comments have been disabled for this article.

Latest news

Roomba Combo j7+ review - Clever trick allows robot vacuum finally to tackle home with rugs and carpets Roomba Combo j7+ review - Clever trick allows robot vacuum finally to tackle home with rugs and carpets (06 Jun 2023 9:19)
Roomba Combo j7+ is the very first Roomba model to combine robot vacuum with mopping features. And Roomba Combo j7+ does all that with a very clever trick, which tackles the problem with mopping and carpets. But is it any good? We found out.
Neato, the robot vacuum company, ends its operations Neato, the robot vacuum company, ends its operations (02 May 2023 3:38)
Neato Robotics has ceased its operations. American robot vacuum pioneer founded in 2005 has finally called it quits and company will cease its operations and sales. Only a skeleton crew will remain who will keep the servers running until 2028.
5 user comments
How to Send Messages to Yourself on WhatsApp How to Send Messages to Yourself on WhatsApp (20 Mar 2023 1:25)
The world's most popular messaging platform, Meta-owned WhatsApp has enabled sending messages to yourself. While at first, this might seem like an odd feature, it can be very useful in a lot of situations. ....
18 user comments
How to Enable Bluetooth on Stadia Controller How to Enable Bluetooth on Stadia Controller (11 Feb 2023 1:04)
Google shut down its streaming game service Stadia late last month and this means that some people have Stadia controllers lying around that seem to be of no use. That is fortunately not the ....
2 user comments
Guide: How to Kick Unwanted Guests from Your Netflix Account Guide: How to Kick Unwanted Guests from Your Netflix Account (26 Jan 2023 2:14)
Sharing a Netflix account with a person in a different location is possible and indeed very common, although the company doesn't necessarily enjoy this behavior from their customers. However, ....

News archive