Posts from Yahoo

Yahoo Is No Longer Dead To Me

A few months I threw a public hissy fit and declared on this blog that Yahoo is dead to me. And they were.

But in four months since I wrote that post, they did some good things.

1) they asked the CEO who led them down the patent troll route to leave the company

2) they invited some smart shareholder activists on the Board

3) they settled with Facebook and abandoned the patent troll route

4) and yesterday they selected Marissa Mayer as their new CEO

That's a string of good decisions culiminating in the wooing of Marissa. As Marc Andreessen said in this interview yesterday, "I didn't think they could get someone like Marissa".

The Yahoo! board went out and got Marissa to lead the company. And they kept their mouths shut in the process and the news surprised everyone. That's how you run a company, a board, and a process. Well done.

It feels like a new leaf has been turned. Marissa has a tough job turning around a company that has had failed leadership forever. I have not worked closely with Marissa but I have seen her up close. She is serious, intense, crisp, data driven, and opinionated. When I think of Marissa, I think of this Jim Barksdale quote:

"If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine."

That approach should serve her well. I wish her and Yahoo! luck and I am rooting for them.

#stocks#Web/Tech

Yahoo! Crosses The Line

The patents that Yahoo! is suing Facebook over are a crock of shit. None of them represent unique and new ideas at the time of the filing. I supect they all can be thrown out over prior art if Facebook takes the time and effort to do that.

But worse, Yahoo! has broken ranks and crossed the unspoken line which is that web companies don't sue each other over their bogus patent portfolios. I don't think there's a unique idea out there in the web space and hasn't been for well over a decade. Pretty much everything useful is based on prior art going back before the commercial web existed.

Yahoo! thinks they can bully Internet newcomers with their bogus patents. And that's a line they should not have crossed. Because other companies have bogus patents too. And they've opened themselves up to be sued back. Frankly I'd like to see it happen just to show them how stupid they are.

I am not writing this in defense of Facebook. They can and will defend themselves. I am wrting this in outrage at Yahoo! I used to care about that company for some reason. No more. They are dead to me. Dead and gone. I hate them now.

#Web/Tech