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Excerpts
Background Note
Yahoo was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo, who began exploring the Internet
as a hobby after finishing their doctoral theses in electrical engineering at
Stanford University. In April 1994, they created a directory to keep track of
their personal interests on the Internet. Gradually, they began to spend more
and more time on their directory. Later, Yang and Filo started categorizing
websites as a way to keep track of all the sites they had visited. They posted
this list on the web as "Jerry and David's Guide to the Worldwide Web."...
The Problems
Though Yahoo possessed search engine and search advertising technology,
integrating both proved to be a difficult task. The engineers in the company had
to be convinced that, rather than build the new technology from scratch, it was
better to use the acquired technology from Inktomi and Overture. In order to
convince the engineers, Semel announced the integration of Yahoo, Inktomi, and
Overture to create the best search technology for consumers and an effective
advertising platform for the advertisers. However, even till early 2004, Yahoo
continued using Google's search engine. In February 2004, Yahoo launched a web
crawler based search engine, based on Yahoo Slurp...
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The Reorganization Program
On December 05, 2006, Semel announced the reorganization of Yahoo and major
changes in its executive team. Semel announced, "Yahoo! is now entering what I
call its third phase - one focused on customers. We're seeing the competitive
and advertising landscapes evolve yet again and today we announced a realignment
that we believe will let Yahoo! capture the major growth opportunities ahead."...
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The Road Ahead
Yahoo's reorganization was expected to eliminate the bureaucracy that
had crept into the company over a period of time. After the
reorganization was announced, the company's stock price fell by 2% to
US$ 26.86. Industry experts were of the view that it was high time that
Yahoo was reorganized as the previous reorganization was done about five
years back (Refer Exhibit VIII for Yahoo's stock price chart). Another
strategy that Yahoo adopted was 'Brand Universe' through which it
planned to develop sites dedicated to high profile entertainment brands
including television shows like Lost and The Office , video games like
Halo and The Sims , movies like Harry Potter... |
Exhibits
Exhibit I: Yahoo - Income Statement Exhibit II: A Note on Online Advertising Market in the US Exhibit III: Yahoo! - Home Page in 1996 Exhibit IV: Yahoo! - Home Page in 2004 Exhibit V: Yahoo! - Acquisitions Exhibit VI: Excerpts from 'Peanut Butter Manifesto' Exhibit VII: Divisions in Advertising and Publishing Group Exhibit VIII: Yahoo - Stock Price Chart (April 2002 - March 2007)
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