CEO degree controversy is latest black cloud over Internet pioneer
In an article I wrote last week about Microsoft pulling a cute one in the buying, selling and use of AOL patents, I mentioned that Yahoo was becoming the “Bad Luck Schleprock” of the Internet. It seems that Yahoo just can’t get out of its own way anymore. For those of us in the Internet since it first became commercial, it is really sad to see this once Titan of the space fall on such hard times. But this much bad luck just doesn’t happen without some fault of the Schleprock himself and that I am afraid is the case with Yahoo as well.
A perfect example is this latest flap over Yahoo’s new CEO claiming that he had a computer science degree when in fact he didn’t have one. It points to bad judgement and faulty fact checking on several counts. First of all having already achieved a high degree of success (pun intended), why would Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson continue to tempt fate by keeping the computer science degree in his resume? He could easily have left that out and no one would have cared, his accomplishments speak for themselves.
On Yahoo’s part, you are hiring a CEO that is supposed to be the savior of your swiftly sinking franchise. Do you think a little due diligence might be required? Even after hiring him, before putting up facts on a web site and filing papers with the SEC and other authorities, a little fact checking maybe? The old adage of an ounce of prevention and all that. But instead, once again Yahoo is the butt of jokes. They just can’t seem to do anything right anymore.
There are some who say that this is just the wheel of Karma turning on Thompson and Yahoo for instigating the whole patent fight with Facebook. That messing with patent enforcement brings its own curse on those who do it. While I am not a big fan of patents, I don’t think that is at play here. No, Yahoo’s bad luck seems to go back way before the patent fights with Facebook. In fact they have been on a downward plunge for years now. It seems that ever since Google overtook them as the search king Yahoo has lost its way.
They spent oodles of money buying oodles of companies or to be more precise in some cases, business plans of wanna be companies. There didn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason on how those companies would play together. The brains behind the acquisitions for the most part left as soon as they could. In fact many of the great minds at Yahoo saw the sinking ship and got out while the getting was good.
Of course there was the famous refusal of Microsoft’s offer to buy them. In retrospect, what a mistake that was! They have tried to hire a CEO now for years and every single one has self-destructed. Not just self-destructed but with a very public scandal to boot. The board is besieged by renegade/activist shareholders. They keep having lay offs.
Worse of all though, who knows what the business plan here is? Is it to be a later day SCO and sue everyone for patents infringement and live off that? If so, that is a sad way for this icon to end up. They seemed to have farmed out the search business to Microsoft. I can tell you that the MyYahoo page I have used as my start page for 10 years or more always seems to have issues and doesn’t work. Their chat rooms and finance stuff still is popular I guess, but really what is the plan to turn this thing around?
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I don’t understand the plan for turning Yahoo around though. They can’t even hire a CEO that can stick around a while. What a shame. In the meantime to kids coming on to the net now Yahoo is as irrelevant as email. I do hope they turn it around and the sun shines once again on Yahoo!
