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Yahoo's Five Big Mistakes

  • Forbes, Wednesday, November 19, 2008 11:30 AM
Forbes asks Yahoo employees to open up about what's gone wrong at the company recently. Most won't talk, but that doesn't stop Forbes from coming up with five themes. First is the number of projects the company has aborted over the last several years. How many new Yahoo products have launched with great fanfare only to fizzle a few months later? "They wasted a lot of money on projects that have been scrapped," says one engineer.

The second big misstep was missing out on Google. Many forget that Yahoo actually had a chance to buy the search giant in 2002. Can you imagine how different the Internet landscape would be if Yahoo had made that purchase? However, then-Yahoo chief Terry Semel balked at Google's high(!)$5 billion price tag. Speaking of Semel, hiring the former Hollywood mogul to run the Internet company was clearly mistake number three. Aside from failing to buy Google, Semel funded a push into media that has largely failed.

Mistake number four, according to Forbes, was failing to buy DoubleClick, the display advertising giant that was eventually sold to Google for $3.1 billion. Display ads are Yahoo's bread-and-butter, and losing out on yet another acquisition to Google only served to strengthen the Yahoo rival even further. Finally, mistake number five, "Yahoo's biggest bonehead maneuver", was failing to do a deal with Microsoft. As a result, the drama dragged on for months, Microsoft walked away, and Yahoo is now stuck with an $11 share price.

Read the whole story at Forbes »

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