Yahooooooo!!!!!! - Hug a Yahoo today!
For few months now, quite a few people have been calling for the removal of Terry Semel as CEO. While it may be justified for folks to call for his head, it was always unclear who would replace Terry Semel. What kind of leader is the right one for yahoo!? Who are the right candidates? Would they be interested? Getting rid of Terry Semel, it seemed would leave Yahoo! in as much of a problem - if not worse - as it is in today.
In a surprise press release, Yahoo! announced that Jerry Yang will take over as a CEO while, Semel stays on a Chairman. This is an awesome news. I have been a strong believer in the internet product vision, & leadership abilities of both the founders (David and Jerry). In some ways, i felt that they can take on more corporately significant roles in the company. It would be better for the company if they did so.
They were always active, but were content let the execution of business be lead by other business people. They have the vision, they have the appetite to take risks and more than anything, they “get it”. It was great to hear about david talking about keeping yahoo! directory open, yahoo! sports open (link to competitors) during the early days. There has been all this talk about “open” applications in the last cpl of years, but i felt that right up from the early days of yahoo! jerry & david espoused this open, free internet idealogy.
What more, with this move, they do retain Semel and hopefully, his business savvy will guide Jerry & David’s technology and product vision to bring yahoo! back to the glory days!
Congratulations Yahoo! Great Move!!
June 18th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
Oh, HELL YEAH….
This is probably the most interesting news to come out of the campus in years. This could almost make going back seem appealing.
June 19th, 2007 at 12:57 am
It’s half good news, but I’m not so sure that Jerry is CEO material. He may “get it” (which is indeed important), but he has worse people skills than even David.
As for finally getting Semel out of there, it’s hard to feel like Yahoo is the winner, considering that he’s taken out half a billion for himself already, with Lord knows how much remaining. I don’t know the details of his packages, but they certainly must have provisions at least as sweet as Zods, who immediately vested all his unvested shares when he leaves (as opposed to us mortals, who lose them) and he has three years to exercise them (as opposed to three months for normal people). I guess the whole target of “incentive” is different when they’re writing the rules for themselves.
June 19th, 2007 at 1:22 am
Yes, the huge salary packages seem unfair. I wonder what would have been yahoo!’s earnings score, if semel’s stock compensation was half of what he ended up getting?
I bet the company wouldn’t have missed earnings this bad.