Yahoo !
Management 745
Building Effective Organizations
Case of Yahoo! Yahoo is a company that started back in 1994 as a website directory and evolved into a very well known brand over the years buying into all sorts of new technologies while remaining cast as a search engine making money off advertising.
Symptoms of Problems There were many visible symptoms of the problems within Yahoo. First off, when the dot.com bust hit, Yahoo found itself in dire straits as far as financials are concerned. As time goes by, Yahoo is ever loosing market share to Google as a search engine. More and more people are googling things instead of resorting to Yahoo. Along with people using Yahoo less for searching, user are leaving Yahoo in favor of other sites such as Google, AOL, Facebook, MySpace, and other news/weather websites. At the same time as all of this there is seen a general decrease in Yahoo’s revenues. In an effort to expand and gain market share and realize greater profits Yahoo often goes out and acquires companies – however, they are finding out after the fact that they are paying too much. Finally, the stock price of Yahoo has plummeted and continues to remain at very low levels in comparison to other companies.
Identifying the Problems
The first problem identified is that Yahoo’s only source of income is from that of advertising. Yahoo has not diversified its sources of income and is therefore very susceptible to the market’s whims. When things like the dot.com bust happen and companies cut back on advertising (or quit since they went out of business) then Yahoo feels the full force of it. Additionally, if a competitor like Google comes along and can do the advertising better, Yahoo has no other income streams to fall back on.
The next problem is that Yahoo cannot seem to get on the leading edge of innovation and instead is buying into new ideas after they have been started and taken off. This inability to be innovative in-house has left yahoo with no other
Building Effective Organizations
Case of Yahoo! Yahoo is a company that started back in 1994 as a website directory and evolved into a very well known brand over the years buying into all sorts of new technologies while remaining cast as a search engine making money off advertising.
Symptoms of Problems There were many visible symptoms of the problems within Yahoo. First off, when the dot.com bust hit, Yahoo found itself in dire straits as far as financials are concerned. As time goes by, Yahoo is ever loosing market share to Google as a search engine. More and more people are googling things instead of resorting to Yahoo. Along with people using Yahoo less for searching, user are leaving Yahoo in favor of other sites such as Google, AOL, Facebook, MySpace, and other news/weather websites. At the same time as all of this there is seen a general decrease in Yahoo’s revenues. In an effort to expand and gain market share and realize greater profits Yahoo often goes out and acquires companies – however, they are finding out after the fact that they are paying too much. Finally, the stock price of Yahoo has plummeted and continues to remain at very low levels in comparison to other companies.
Identifying the Problems
The first problem identified is that Yahoo’s only source of income is from that of advertising. Yahoo has not diversified its sources of income and is therefore very susceptible to the market’s whims. When things like the dot.com bust happen and companies cut back on advertising (or quit since they went out of business) then Yahoo feels the full force of it. Additionally, if a competitor like Google comes along and can do the advertising better, Yahoo has no other income streams to fall back on.
The next problem is that Yahoo cannot seem to get on the leading edge of innovation and instead is buying into new ideas after they have been started and taken off. This inability to be innovative in-house has left yahoo with no other