Yahoo and Google's final is far from starting

Yahoo has created its own business to achieve the Google,google in the network of the two core areas of search engines and online advertising to do the limelight.

But Yang said: "The future winner, now we do not know." It's like playing baseball, we won the first inning, they won the second inning, but it's not the right time. Given that Yahoo has just released its best earnings in history ──2005 the second quarter of the year, the company's quarterly profit of 755 million dollars--an answer that can be accepted.

But Yahoo and Google, two of the same revenue-generating companies, have been in a different place 18 months later. Today, the size of the 500 million visitors per month makes Yahoo still known as the world's largest internet company, but it misses the window of opportunity for online advertising to grow at a high rate. Yahoo's profit fell year-on-year for five consecutive quarters since the first quarter of 2005. By the first quarter of this year, Google's revenue had reached twice times more than Yahoo's, and its market capitalisation was 4.5 times times that of Yahoo.

Although Jerry Yang can still be said to be "not the time to tell the winners and losers," but as he likened, Yahoo from the first inning to the second inning to give up the throne, this is a fairly interesting story. Although the past two years, there is no lack of Yahoo and outsiders to comment on its fate, but most critics prefer to focus on a certain side, and ignore this is a multi-level frustration experience.

The most fundamental mistake of Yahoo's defeat is that it gave up the dominant position in the Search engine field. This seems like an overly results-oriented evaluation, but misses the leading position on the Internet's most important emerging market, and it announces that it can only play a supporting role before the next industry jump (Paradigm Shift).

A central summary of why Yahoo misses the search engine is that Yahoo's strategy is out of focus. This is the second level of the story. As the "Peanut Butter Manifesto" written by Brad Gallinghaus, Yahoo's senior vice president, Garlinghouse at the end of 2006, Yahoo's "lack of a vision of a focused, inherently logical cohesion" makes it the top three in every segment, But not the core competitiveness.

The most revealing, but less talked about, Yahoo's busy appearance under the slack. As Intel co-founder Andy Grove said: "Only paranoia can survive" (ironically, in an interview with global entrepreneur, Jerry Yang said Grove was his most admired entrepreneur). In the cold of the Internet, Yahoo through a series of big adjustment, gained a prosperous period, but then, lack of sense of crisis let it lose the decision-making ability, successive missing search engine, Community class website two important opportunities.

Semel

June 18, 2007, Yahoo in its Silicon Valley headquarters held a meeting of all staff. In the face of thousands of employees, company CEO Terry Semel (Terry Semel) delivered a hollow and powerless speech. Even if everyone knew that Semel had just resigned, the staff still only reported sporadic applause. And after he appeared on the stage Yang Zhiyuan, then ushered in a warm cheer.

It's not hard to feel the disappointment of Semel inside and outside the company. Zhou, the former Yahoo China president, recalls the global entrepreneur that he had had several contacts with Semel, but "he didn't understand what he said about technology and innovation." Another person who has worked at Yahoo's headquarters for years has said that because Semel lacks the grasp of technology direction, "leading to Yahoo's technical innovation is not active." It is said that in the year before Semel's departure, each board will discuss his succession issues.

A wrong person leads the wrong company at the wrong time? Not so absolutely. Just three years ago, Semel was directing a story of a rebirth. At the time, the media was delighted that, under the lead of the rarely-emailed Hollywood tycoon, Yahoo made 239 million dollars in 2003, a substantial leap from a 93 million dollar loss two years ago. At the same time, it has a broad alliance with Hollywood content companies and acquired two search technology companies coveted by Microsoft. This combination of content and technology suggests the future of a "media company in the 21st century".

Perhaps a more accurate judgment is: Yahoo can avoid excite, Lycos equivalent period portal site disappeared fate, this technical layman work. But also because Semel lacks the technical background, he has met the personal and the company "the ceiling" after taking the Yahoo to a height.

In 2001, Semel took over a typical Silicon Valley start-up company. But because of the early years of money and the rapid growth of the market, it swelled to the size of a large company too quickly. Yahoo, for example, has created 44 businesses in blind growth-even though GE, under Mr Welch, has 9 business departments. And since the advertising market was once a superstition for online advertising, Yahoo had earned 717 million dollars in 2001, but never a qualified ad sales team. Before the dotcom bust, most people's job was to check out the latest orders in front of the mailbox. But when the world's mania for the internet suddenly ends, they don't know who to call and how to sell.

For the Terry Semel, who is 26 years older than Jerry Yang and a former co-founder of Warner Bros., the difference between this and running a traditional company is not big. He quickly reduced the 44 departments to 4 blocks of business. These include the design of paid businesses, such as fee emails that quickly created a steady income for Yahoo. Also, Semel asked the heads of each category to sell him as a target, and the result was: "I don't know what you're talking about, and what's worse, you don't know." "As a result, the sales-born Hollywood veteran has been nurturing Yahoo's sales team.

This series of adjustments, for Yahoo won the dotcom bubble shattered after the revival of the moment, but also to Semel won a new halo. But the really tough challenge has not yet come: Does the CEO, who doesn't even know what a "server" is, can help a technology company find a long-term and sustainable strategy?

Identity Crisis

Yahoo is not without a strategic goal, and after further establishing its position as the world's largest web portal, it wants to be the only option for anyone who wants to find any information, communicate with anyone, and buy any product.

This is a clear and ambitious dream, but the path to this goal is mottled. "We have always felt that Yahoo is a company on the internet," Yang said in an exchange with The Economist, and the "four pillars" of community, communication, search engines and E-commerce are the support of this vision.

Theoretically, this is a platform supported by four of businesses, but think about the rise of the internet so far, there has never been a company to take into account the four, you can know it is not easy to implement.

And that's just one aspect of the business that Yahoo is involved in. At the same time as Yahoo Rich technology line, Semel also follow their familiar media industry experience, set up a media platform: he hired once produced "Sopranos" and "lost" two of the popular TV series Royd Braun, the formation of Yahoo Media Group, and even Semel also personally, will "apprentice" and other TV programs are being introduced to Yahoo's network.

Although this kind of technology and media complementary existence form, once won the outside world wide approbation, but to "complementary" also means: Yahoo never clear between the two who is the priority, and thus buried a lot of difficult to reconcile contradictions.