Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Yahoo gives up?

Yahoo CFO Susan Decker said:
We don't think it's reasonable to assume we're going to gain a lot of share from Google. It's not our goal to be No. 1 in Internet search. We would be very happy to maintain our market share.
Very happy just to maintain? Is Yahoo entering its senior years? Very happy if they just don't decline any further?

Even if Susan believes this to be true, this statement is utterly destructive. Who wants to work at a company that has lost its edge? Who on the Yahoo search team wouldn't look at this and think, maybe I should go 5.8 miles down the road to a place where they do care about making the best search?

[via Steve Rubel and Danny Sullivan]

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Kinda a stretch relation, but look at the biggest bankruptcies in recent years in the Retail business, Montgomery Ward and K-Mart (did they go bankrupt? they've been doing badly anyway). Both companies used to be strong, but after years of not expanding they dies out, passed by competitors that were more ambitious (one in particular that you probably figure out). I can see this kind of thing happening with Google and Yahoo.