Engine Trouble: Yahoo Layoffs, Strife at Ask.com Parent IAC
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | January 30, 2008 | Share This
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It’s been a somewhat sad few days in search engine news. First, hard days ahead for some Yahoo employees: a thousand of them will be laid off. The company’s earnings were for the last quarter were actually better than expected, but the problem is a bleak outlook for 2008. Yahoo’s leadership didn’t inspire confidence on the call, writes Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, and we agree with Kara Swisher, who pointed out the wait-and-see tone of Yahoo execs is what we’ve heard for months now. At the NYT, Saul Hansell called out the real problem, which is Yahoo’s lack of strategy:
Instead, Mr. Yang and Ms. Decker’s strategy is essentially “vision goes here.” They want to be the “starting point” for users on the Web. They want to be the “must buy” for advertisers. And Mr. Yang said he would assume an “aggressive investment posture.”
The only thing missing from that is the substance. Why would users start at Yahoo? How are advertisers going to find Yahoo superior? And what will the company invest in?
To be fair, I know there are many smart diligent executives working hard at Yahoo who think they have good answers to these questions. But they need support at the top.
Yahoo’s stock dropped nearly 10%. Perhaps the wrong people are being laid off?
Over at IAC, Ask.com’s parent company, what can only be described as the corporate equivalent of a catfight has CEO Barry Diller going up against backer Liberty Media, which wants to give him the boot. Kara Swisher explains what the fighting’s all about:
But the fight is a serious one for a number of high-profile Web companies within IAC, which was being restructured to stop just this kind of fighting between Diller and Malone.
Just how Diller has gone about rejiggering it all, in complicated spin-offs in a way that allegedly undercuts Liberty’s control yet again, is what set the new round of tensions off.
Those sites embroiled in the fighting include: Expedia, TicketMaster, LendingTree and Ask.
Diller’s one of a group of IAC execs Liberty wants to oust, and Diller recently retorted, “I am beginning to think these people are insane.” IAC stock has been trending down since November of last year, but here’s hoping Ask.com doesn’t get caught in the crossfire of this squabble.
Topics: Ask.com, Investment, M&A, Legal Issues, Yahoo! |
Ahhh this is why I’m glad FunAdvice’s co-founder is an ex-Yahoo exec. We have had 700+% growth in the past year, and amazing leadership.