The past few days have seen quite a few prominent articles that question Yahoo!’s leadership position online. From the “peanut butter memo,” to the New York Times analysis of Yahoo!’s brand – the buzz on the web is that the company is at a crossroads.
Fred Wilson took a look at Yahoo!’s numbers to see if they were losing marketshare. He found they weren’t, with the conclusion:
“While the Internet may be far from mature, many of the leading businesses on the Internet are starting to be.”
Dave Winer adds to the Yahoo! conversation with three points:
- There is no way to make them lean and focused, that’s not how big companies work.
- Yahoo should continue to buy their innovation from outside, because that’s where innovation comes from.
- What Yahoo may need is someone who can speak for them, who can give an exciting speech, who can lead all the external forces, and internal ones too.