Rebooting Yahoo

Yahoo! RIP 1994-2008, originally uploaded by  Sigalakos. Representative of the reaction on Flickr yesterday.

I left the exclamation point off of Yahoo! in the title of this post. That's because Yahoo!, my good-natured employer has been having a rough 12 months. They lost a lot of the search business to Google, they lost a lot of good (and not good) management, they lost their way.

So, today's news that Microsoft is interested in getting the beleaguered company on the cheap was not a total surprise. Microsoft may very well may pull the purchase off but I hope not, at least not on these terms. Yahoo is struggling, but they've got a lot of good people who would not like to join Microsoft as losers.

So, how does Yahoo! prevent this from happening? By empowering the winners left at Yahoo!.

* Simplify organization and management.

* Show some courage, make some hard choices. But choose a path that looks out for consumers, advertisers and the web community. But just choose one. don't choose 3.

* Clear people who are creating bureaucracy, permanently if necessary. Even if their efforts are well-intentioned, they kill the fun of developing really innovative projects.

* Come to grips with the things that the Company isn't very good at. Be it product segments, process, dare I say... some form of marketable innovation (and not just innovation for innovations sake).

Maybe some of these options require layoffs. Maybe there's a strategic spin off of some business, or a partnership (selling a stake in the advertising platforms to News Corp, Microsoft or some other deep-pocketed investor).

If Yahoo! can't take any action at all-- which sometimes seems like it's possible-- well then, then I guess Microsoft is going to get Yahoo! on the cheap. Too bad for consumers.