The company, he says, was never really that great. According to him, they were always destined to fail because they didn't plan for the future.
The executive, whom they identify only as "a former executive from Yahoo's last great era," told Business Insider the company's decline in recent years is the result of a lack of vision at the top.
He characterized Yahoo's success as a direct result of bad judgement by decision makers at other companies, saying:
The internet blew up and people were paying ridiculous sums of money to advertise on Yahoo. I remember doing this deal with Barnes and Noble, we did this 30 million dollar deal over 3 years, and they just thought they had to be there. The reality is everybody was paying too much money to be a part of Yahoo back in the go-go days. We were generating revenues that were built on false premises.
According to this unnamed executive, Yahoo failed to plan for the future and only made a half hearted effort to develop new products. This kept them from expanding into new markets the way Google has.
As evidence, he cited the success being enjoyed by former Yahoo employees like LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and Microsoft Online Services President Qi Lu:
Yahoo had a lot of really good people who are now doing a lot of great things all over the place. They never really gave those people the investment and the resources they needed to really go for it in any of their respective areas.
Written by: Rich Fiscus @ 2 Nov 2011 18:03
