I sort of had a feeling that Marissa was not qualified to revive yahoo but instead dress it up for exit, which is what it seems she has spent many years doing as what I would refer too as the shareholders proxy.
Lest we forget that Yahoo in the late 90s before Google came along was setting the standard of what was then considered early stage social networking, search advertising and web based content media. How such a brand could lose its way after being pinned by its competition such as Google over the years is a clear example of internal innovations within the company being stifled.
More than its business model Yahoo has probably messed up its internal culture. It was not surprising to hear that board whilst keen to let go of Yahoo as a brand, have determined that Alibaba one of Yahoos assets was worth holding onto.
Alibaba rivals ebay and is a huge and growing web based market place that trades with the world and it has been largely concentrated in China with their ability to move large volumes of product globally through their manufacturing strengths.
Whilst as an old man I could ramble about Yahoos flaws til the cows come home, I will choose not too instead referring this article back to the 'internet of all things' and putting out a probing question which is: 'is our traditional internet now simply being monopolized to the extent that control of meta information has now become data of the privileged few businesses'.
Whilst acquisition hype tends to benefit the entrepreneurs looking to make a quick buck in tech, what it does not do is encourage competitive innovation because as smaller innovative developers, their firms, app builders etc get swallowed up by the likes of Google, Facebook, Apple or Microsoft they also inherit the weaknesses of the larger organizations.
Those weaknesses are that 90% of all ideas being innovated within these big tech companies are often shelved and gather dust never to see the light of day or even be commercially tested. The sad reality of innovation.
It is not just isolated to the tech industry that companies get consumed by bigger ones, it has been in every industry for quite some time but the thing that the tech world has to be very careful of now is that this type of economic culture is not by any means a good thing, because as bigger companies grow and smaller ones disappear off the map, it starts to lead to a poorer economic climate with less incentive on job creation, innovation and entrepreneurship.
The mentality of TOO BIG TO FAIL, needs to be quickly removed and the only way in which to keep larger corporations honest with their capabilities is to introduce new small businesses who can create something that may seek to disrupt the all powerful business models held by the big giants.
