You wouldn’t know it from the plummeting numbers, though. CNET’s article says Yahoo is just looking for a little respect. Tom Krazit’s piece makes this case, and it’s absolutely accurate: “The general public has long stopped thinking of Yahoo as a search vehicle. That distinction belongs to the company whose name has become a verb meaning “to search for information on the Internet.”
When people started saying “Google it” it was game over in search…for now.
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz (wink, wink) continues to sell non-core properties. Zimbra was sold to VMware, and now HotJobs goes to Monster.com. The sale price is $225 million in cash.
Get all the details here. Sneaky of them to announce the day before The Event, trying to draft off of El Jobso’s fame. No word yet from Fake Carol Bartz. And while we’re discussing Big Purple- who is that guy below? MC Hammer?
Why does the search box get shoved over to the left in the Beta version of Chrome and Safari, but not on any other browser? I guess it’s OK, no one seems to use it.
Yahoo! came out with a statement condemning the cyber attack on Chinese Gmail accounts. CNN Money has more here.
Yahoo! in the news today. This article indicates their open-source Zimbra client will go to VMware “for a figure north of $100 million.” Kara’s post also says the Yahoo! is considering solicited bids for its small business unit. This article, meanwhile, says Big Purple is going to outsource Yahoo! Shopping (didn’t know there was such a thing) to an outfit called PriceGrabber.
The media has spent time recently recalling the disastrous AOL-Time Warner merger. Rightfully so, as history records that one as the biggest flop ever. (So far.) This story indicates it could’ve turned out a lot differently. As in Yahoo!-Time Warner.
Carol Bartz, the always excitable Yahoo! CEO, has given herself a B- as she completes her first year as CEO next week. She thinks she could’ve moved faster to reorg the company and do a Microsoft search deal, but the CEO spot “is a big job.” (They didn’t tell her that going in?) Chairman Roy Bostock grades Bartz at A-. Get more here. Fake Carol Bartz is a little more pointed. ”Unfortunately ‘Bourbon’ isn’t a rating so I went with the closest, B-. If I was an Appletons lady, you can bet I’d rate myself A-.“
(photo by me, Sunnyvale, summer 2007)
Interesting article here about the “It’s You!” campaign by Big Purple. Yahoo! says their ad campaign is working. Something about how homepage “engagement” rose 3% to 5% from September to October. When you look under hood, says Nicolas Carlson, you realize two things. One, October has more days than September. And now when you log out of Yahoo! Mail, the home page auto-loads. Nice bump, eh? Here’s a chat with Yahoo! CMO Elisa Steele about the campaign, (in case you! missed it.)
Those of you departing out of San Francisco International or San Jose International today, will notice that your baggage costs are on the house. The purple house, that is. Yahoo! is going to pay for it. That’s gonna cost a lot on one of the busiest travel days of the year, and not sure how you balance that expenditure with the fact there’s a worldwide Yahoo! shutdown from the 25th to the 1st, and if you want to be paid during that span, you have to use vacation time. Search Engine Land says this promotion is part of the Yahoo! For Good inititive, yet there’s no mention of this on that site or the corporate blog.
