Semel's Ouster Does Little To Enthuse Yahoo Shareholders

from the no-bounce dept

Tue, Jun 19th 2007 10:03am — Joseph Weisenthal

It's gotta be a bit humiliating for any chief executive when their company's stock jumps after their departure. Fortunately for Terry Semel, it doesn't look like this will be something he has to endure. After an initial jump, Yahoo's stock has given back all of its gains, as the realization sets in that the ascension of Jerry Yang won't be some magic bullet to turn the company around. The market's muted reaction echoes the sentiment among many folks, who feel that the announcement did little to inspire confidence. If anything, the handling of the announcement only furthered the impression that Yahoo is unaware of its own troubled state, as the change was presented as if it were the next logical step along its existing path. Some of the company's language could be chalked up to typical corporate puffery, but the market obviously wanted something much stronger than it actually got.

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feh, 19 Jun 2007 @ 10:42am

"Semel's Ouster", which individual was that? How does one become a professional ouster?
I'd like to smack whoever started using the word "ouster" in that fashion. It's just cropped up in the last few years.
I know it is technically correct, but it just sounds wrong.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Jun 2007 @ 11:40am

History repeats (with new heroes and villains)
While Yahoo clearly needs a deep re-think of its strategy, the problem isn't entirely Yahoo's. This phenomenon is typical in any market where there is an extremely dominant player. Google is just so strong that everyone else has to drastically adjust themselves to deal with it. The strength of the dominant player builds on itself (as more people use it, it gets better; it gets more of the ad revenue; it gets more of the cream of engineers; it can invest more in new ideas etc.) A similar thing happend with Microsoft and its competitors in the 90's.

But this isn't all bad either - it makes people really stretch themselves to innovate instead of doing just "me-too" stuff. Yahoo will need to drastically innovate; otherwise it will die just like Netscape, Borland, Corel etc. in the earlier era.
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Michael, 19 Jun 2007 @ 3:09pm

I would have been happier if Yang hadn't been so h
As an analyst reminded the Wall Street Journal, Jerry Yang shares responsibility for what has happened to Yahoo. His statement says to me, "We're going to do more of the same, only better." Yahoo still seems to suffer from hubris, an essential character quality for Greek tragedies.

-- Michael from the U.S. Desk at TheNewsRoom.com
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