Terry Semel came from Hollywood to lead Yahoo in 2007. He dressed well and gave great presentations. For several years he did well, at least from a revenue & profit perspective. He made a couple of smart acquisitions such as Flickr. He moved Yahoo from a fascinating geeky entity to a directionless boring one.
He stepped down yesterday, and the stock ticked up over a point. Most people seem to agree his departure is good for Yahoo, it's customers and the industry.
I'm told he's a nice guy, but it seems to me a good thing that he is returning leadership to co-founder Jerry Yang, even if Yang stays in the position only for a transition.
Semel has been taken to task this morning for losing ground to Google. He is not alone, everyone else has. He has lost investor faith because ad revenues are downward spiraling and the stock has dropped in a year by about 30% at a time when most stocks in his sector are doing well.
From my view, these were all results of Semel's single over-riding flaw. He has simply lacked any vision to give Yahoo cohesion and direction. When he came in, he was supposed to marry Yahoo to the Hollywood culture from which he came, which was of course unwise. After that, he wanted Yahoo to own communities. But community members want to be hosted, not owned.
For the past few years, Yahoo has just sort of drifted sideways, demonstrating no technology innovations and no brilliant acquisitions. It's home page is still the most frequently visited place on the Internet, but it is starting to look old, sort of like a hotel who missed the last scheduled upgrade.
At the core of Yahoo, there remains one of the finest technology teams ever assembled. My hope is that Yang starts pointing them toward a few goals that make sense and creates an urgency about getting there.
This is not because I am a Yahoo cheerleader. It's because end users will benefit greatly from a third fierce competitor in Internet communities and media services. It is also because, as good as it is, the world could still use a better search engine.
