The Zeitgeist

There has been much moaning about the departures of really well-known names from Yahoo. Now, I don’t know any of the folks involved, but if you compare all of the criticisms about what Yahoo has not been doing over the part few years in terms of innovating and getting new products out and or having, as so many analysts have complained even a coherent strategy for what it wants to be .., one is forced to ask “Well, who is responsible for this..?” The working engineers? Nope. Jerry Yang? Nope. It’s the very people who are now leaving. Yahoo’s direction is set by some of these very high-level execs.. they are the ones that tell the executive team and the board of directors what Yahoo can deliver and give the marching orders to the engineers who make things happen.

If this were any other non-Internet company, these departures would be seen as a good thing — a chance to re-vitalize a company. It’s no different here … Yahoo is filled with really smart people with good ideas. I’ll bet most of the good ideas waiting to capitalized upon are not at these executive levels, but are down at the product development/management and operations level. Hell, I have a few dozen product ideas that could make Yahoo a few billion in the next year (of course trying to get an interview at Yahoo is impossible – Lord knows I’ve tried…).

Fortunately, the whole Microsoft merger thing seems to be off the table – it would have the worst possible outcome. Yahoo doesn’t need more micro-manging bean-counters, it needs to, in the words of former Citibank Chairman John Reed, “let a thousand flowers bloom” and set its people free to unleash as many new products and ideas as it can possibly deliver. Let the users see what Yahoo can give – they will find their own uses for them and in doing so create new aggregations, new mash-ups, and new marketplaces. Look at the ecosystem that is evolving around Twitter – despite its well-known uptime issues; there are boatloads of really cool applications being developed around it.

If Yahoo really wants to re-start and right itself, it needs to bring in some really good technology managers (like me!) from the outside who are willing to listen to all the talent they have inside and help the Yahooligans create great new products by giving them the support to do so, by getting the hell out of the way and stopping the micro-managing.