Yahoo! – It’s Time to Shoot for the Moon

I’m often late to the party. Though the book came out years ago, I’m just getting around to reading Blue Ocean Strategy. So far, it’s a nice reminder to think about things differently when thinking about company strategy. This brings me to my point.

Yahoo is one of my favorite companies. I don’t know why. I’ve never been employed there or otherwise worked for them. I just admire what they stand for to me –innovation, excellence and, so I think, fun. (In fact, I admire them so much I forced my fiancée to drive with me to Sunnyvale during a recent visit to the Bay area so I could get a picture with the logo – must be logged into Facebook.) As we all know, Yahoo has struggled a bit recently. Jerry Yang, the co-founder who retook the helm last year, stepped down a few days ago under external and probably some internal pressure, in no small part due to his reluctance to accept a buyout offer from Microsoft.

Search and advertising… We know it’s hot. Almost everyone searches for something on the Internet and what better way to make money than to present relevant ads to people searching for a particular topic? Yahoo has spun its wheels chasing after Google’s leadership position there and is finally realizing there’s nothing there but also-ran status. The question becomes what else is there? The answer … plenty.

Someone reminded me recently that the iPhone didn’t exist a year and a half ago. At the time, “experts” thought it would be years before people took real advantage of Internet access on their phones. My how things change in a year and half. The opportunities that will exist in a year, or better yet five years, are very different from the ones we see today. It is likely that our use of personal computers will change drastically, as will the way we find and consume information. Ubiquitous Internet, location driven content and advertising and the emergence of the web as our go to platform (over Windows, OS X and most other operating systems) for productivity applications will radically change the Internet landscape. Search will be important, but it is my guess that the delivery of relevant content and the platform(s) on which that content is delivered will be pivotal – not to mention the opportunities that I couldn’t begin to fathom. Yahoo, if they can hang on and with the right leadership, will find the opportunities and seize them.

Yahoo has to stop competing with Google. I said it before when I initially wrote about the whole Microhoo idea. I’m saying it again. It’s impossible to see the road ahead of you when you’re only looking at your competitors’ rear ends. It’s the whole Red Ocean Strategy idea mentioned in Blue Ocean Strategy. Instead, it’s time for Yahoo to put on the brakes, re-assess where things are going, create their own value curve and shoot for the moon. They’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain…