Kodak? Nokia? Blackberry? Yahoo!? Not too difficult to spot the similarities. Another is that Holway has, in the past, been a very keen and loyal customer. Indeed, Yahoo Finance is still something I refer to countless times everyday. Although I had thought highly of the service, it has been hit by far too many glitches recently. So many that I now cannot rely on the figures it presents to me and I am thinking of jumping ship. On top of that, the service hasn’t evolved in years. It is stuck in a timewarp starved of investment.
Yesterday Yahoo announced that it would cut 2000 staff – c15% of its global workforce. The 4th such massive jobs cull that has been enacted in recent years. CEO Scott Thomson said that he was making the cuts as part of ‘our goal to get back to our core purpose to put our users and advertisers first”. But there was no concrete news on how that bit would be achieved. Yahoo’s online advertising revenues are under massive threat – particularly from its giant rival Google and the new, rampant Facebook.
As colourful use of language always interests me, Prof Stephen Diamond of Santa Clara University said Yahoo had “moved into the carcass phase”. Ie it was now only of interest to those lawyers and vulture funds who wanted to pick over the decaying bits. He thought that a turnaround was “all but impossible”.
Back in 2008, Yahoo rejected a $30b bid from Microsoft. Today Yahoo has a market value of $18b and falling. Its revenues have barely moved in the period and its market share has slumped.