Ok, so now what?

Posted May 4th, 2008 at 7:55 pm by Jerry Yang, CEO & Chief Yahoo

 141 Comments / Filed in: Yahoo! Opinions

The last 13 weeks have been a remarkable time here at Yahoo!. We’ve been living under the microscope in a way we never have before. There has been greater attention than ever on our strategy and our ability to execute against it. Some even questioned whether Microsoft’s unsolicited proposal would distract us from our mission, just as we were beginning to really push the pedal on our strategy.

Those people underestimated the determination of Yahoo!’s incredible people, spirit and culture.

Our first quarter was probably one of the most exciting quarters in our history in terms of delivering innovative products and services that really move the needle and make a difference for our users and customers: Acquiring Maven Networks. Launching Buzz, OneSearch 2.0, voice-activated mobile search, video on Flickr, Shine. Previewing AMP! from Yahoo! and SearchMonkey. Adding more Newspaper Consortium members. Establishing our New R&D labs in India and Israel. Our first quarter results proved that we have the right strategy, a fantastic team, and that our investments are starting to pay off.

All of this reinforced our board’s position that Microsoft’s offer undervalued our unique global franchise.

So, what’s next? With Microsoft’s withdrawal, we’ll be better able to focus our energy on growing our industry leadership and maximizing value for stockholders. We’ll continue to execute on our plan — making your Internet experience as personal, relevant, open and social as possible, serving advertisers so well they insist on working with us, and opening up Yahoo! in a way that developers dream of. And, we’ll also continue to pursue strategic opportunities that position us for long-term success.

Has this experience changed us? Of course, it has. We’ve emerged a stronger, more focused company with an even greater sense of purpose. I’m so proud of how this company has come together, put the noise aside, and showed the world that we have the resolve and determination to thrive in challenging times.

We know the spotlight will probably stay on us for a while. That’s fine — we have a clear path ahead and momentum to build on. And thousands of dedicated Yahoos around the world who have held up well to scrutiny. It’s now up to us to show what we Yahoos can really do.

By the way, I’m sure you’ve all read or watched the news about this. Frankly, there’s a lot of nonsense and misinformation in what’s being reported. Just so we are all clear, here’s what happened. The board took its mission very seriously. We clearly indicated to Microsoft that we were open to a transaction but only if it were on terms that fully recognized the value of Yahoo! and was in the best interests of our stockholders.

No one is celebrating about the outcome of these past three months… and no one should. We live and work in a competitive world and the Web is only going to get more competitive. Executing on our strategic plan is what matters most.

Finally, I’d like to thank the many of you who so passionately shared your support for Yahoo!. That’s what brings it all home for us.

Jerry Yang
CEO and Chief Yahoo

Tagged: microsoft

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141 Comments Add your own

Regal | May 4th, 2008 at 8:06 pm

No wonder Yahoo has crumbled as much and as fast as it has.

No amount of PR and marketing gurus can fix bad decisions, lack of integrity, lack of personal and professional business ethics, and lack of leadership.

When you lose the trust of your clients due to consistently bad business decisions and longstanding customer service issue….you lose your company.

Checkmate…

Kathleen | May 4th, 2008 at 8:26 pm

Well said Regal…

well said.

Scott | May 4th, 2008 at 8:28 pm

Jerry,

It was not the shareholders or the employees that you have failed, it’s the end users.

Repeatedly.

We have seen by Yahoo’s actions that we are tertiary and while we are asked for our thoughts on significant issues on these blogs, I doubt many suggestions have been implemented.

Give the people what they want, even if that’s not your vision. Happy consumers visit more frequently, spend more freely and were the backbone of the Yahoo! of the past.

manish jain | May 4th, 2008 at 10:26 pm

Very simple to sum up - you guys got lazy.

Previously, you were the 2GFS (Guys from Stanford) that everyone was talking about. Unfortunately that baton has been passed on to Google and they really seem like they have no plans to get lazy.

The only thing holding me back from switching completely to Google is the My Yahoo homepage.

Ranjit Mathoda | May 4th, 2008 at 10:48 pm

You have the opportunity to prove your decision was right for Yahoo shareholders. It depends on whether you can make Yahoo services more relevant than those of Microsoft, Google, and startups that come along the way. Good luck! Go execute…

JJ | May 4th, 2008 at 11:05 pm

You treated me so badly when you hosted my website that I will never forgive you.

Amit Goyal | May 4th, 2008 at 11:15 pm

Hi,

I am so glad that you guys resisted the MS take over. I have also thought Yahoo can do good stuff, and it is not just because some of my friends work there.

Its because Yahoo was the coolest thing when I hooked on to the internet. You guys have some cool products - Yahoo Mail, Del.icio.us & Flickr, and some awesome folks. What is needed more such creative thinking and a lot of hard work to regain lost ground.

I wish you all the best of luck and hope that Yahoo will again become 2GFS that everyone else is talking about.

Cheers,
Amit

Alex Brie | May 4th, 2008 at 11:16 pm

I for one was glad the deal fell through. I am just a end user, not a Yahoo investor but, for the last 5-6 years, I never used any of Microsoft’s online products, whereas I am a devoted Yahoo user.

I prefer Yahoo to remain the same or even get a bit smaller, if it still can hold its integrity, the friendly attitude towards users and the innovation spirit.
Maybe the events in the last months finally showed you guys that no one is invincible, even the mighty are prone to fall. Building great products or making the existing ones greater is what you should focus on; Yahoo should reinvent itself by improving what it already has instead of getting zillions of minor products out each day. Please fix Yahoo Messenger and make it smaller and less spammy, please fix Yahoo Mail and make it faster and less filled with advertising.

Build a strong brand focusing on user experience and ease of use, build on your core competencies(mail, messenger, answers, finance..) and get going. If you do it right, maybe by next year it will be you guys bidding for Microsoft.

The Fly | May 4th, 2008 at 11:19 pm

You’ve all been “Yanged.”

SearcHEngineS WEB | May 4th, 2008 at 11:35 pm

The new focus really should be on adding semantic search and concept search to Yahoo search.

While adding social sites is interesting, the ultimate goal should be on intelligent search hi tech - there lies the future of search

peter | May 5th, 2008 at 12:09 am

I’m asking myself why is flickr my whole world

Lutfar Rahman Nirjhar | May 5th, 2008 at 12:20 am

I believe Yahoo! Will survive as Yahoo! Searching is the factor and I know Yahoo! will overcome it. Yahoo! Is number one and will remain #1. My best wishes.

Norman Allen | May 5th, 2008 at 12:26 am

If Yahoo is serious about expansion concepts we would like to sit down and discuss enhanced directory services with utilities and applications that will grow Yahoo and revenue.

Nigel | May 5th, 2008 at 12:31 am

Dear Yahoo,

You guys blew it when the bubble burst and Yahoo thought it was king of the Internet. I still use your email and IM but I’ve given up on your search product. Google is years ahead of Yahoo’s search, which is sad, since Yahoo began as a search engine that everyone at Stanford preferred to crawl the web. Even the Google guys used your search product in college. Then Yahoo went to crap and Larry and Sergey made searching better because Yahoo got lazy and greedy. I remember using your other ad-supported services like the personals and classifieds, then Yahoo thought it was a bright idea to charge for social networking, then MySpace came along and the rest is history. Yahoo is now a case study Internet Misleadership.

The persons responsible for allowing Google to become the number one search engine at Yahoo’s expense should be fired immediately. There’s no excuse for that critical lapse of judgement.

Adnan | May 5th, 2008 at 12:51 am

Hey there Jerry.

You guys made Yahoo and know what it’s worth and what value it holds.

I think everybody should respect that. Anybody who’s done something and worked hard on it knows the efforts involved and IMO has the right to decide whats best.

I don’t know if it would make much difference to you, but I’ve been developing websites for the past 3 years, and use all search engines heavily.

I have a few suggestions to Yahoo on Yahoo Search.

First of all, I think Yahoo has a pretty decent search engine with decent results and with some refinements can boost quite a bit of market share.

Ok, here goes

1) If possible please get rid of that tracking code on your search. IMO it’s a turn off. Or at least give users an option to turn it off in their preferences.

2) I would focus on YPN, and make it easy for publishers all across the globe to participate.

3) An analytics by Yahoo would be instantly accepted IMO by most webmasters.

4) I guess try to work on that web rank again, and see if it can be perfected or improved and bring it back.

These are just my suggestions, I could be wrong, but I did give my honest feedback.

take care

Soyapi | May 5th, 2008 at 1:38 am

I’m excited Yahoo! is not going to be under Microsoft. I smiled when I got a tweet breaking the news.

I love some Yahoo services and I’m still hopeful you guys can stand on your own and compete fairly well on the web. YAP and YOS look promising so far.

Competition is good and fun. There’s room for Google, Microsoft and Yahoo on the web. It’s just a matter of execution.

All the best, from Malawi!

The Big K | May 5th, 2008 at 1:42 am

My $0.02 -

I have always been a Yahoo lover. I thought Yahoo would beat everyone on the Internet in terms of online services and products. However, its sad that Yahoo has failed to live up to its promise.

As an end user & a webmaster, I don’t see any improvements in your search engine results. Everyday, our website is visited by hundreds of Yahoo Spiders, however, when it comes to listing relevant pages, Yahoo simply fails. Search engines, being the door to the Internet, must not fail at this.

Lately, please focus on customer service! I’ve had a ‘bad’ experience with Yahoo’s customer service. As someone said above, Yahoos are lazy!

I still believe that Yahoo will emerge as a winner in near future. You’ve got talent - just make sure you make us (the end users) happy.

-The Big K-

Luboš Motl | May 5th, 2008 at 2:05 am

Jerry Yang is entertaining. He offers the world these fancy emotional comments whose only real content is that he thinks that the offer was undervalued. How much undervalued was it exactly when it added 50% to to stock price?

And what do you think that the price will approximately be when the offer is dead? I am pretty sure that some of the stockholders will be rather upset to lose 20-30% of their assets overnight because of this pride of Jerry Yang who is out of touch with the real world, real numbers, and who puts his own exclusive position on the top place.

Tom | May 5th, 2008 at 2:10 am

Fiduciary duty anyone?

Should have sold at 30 and negotiated for billions of capex

Charbax | May 5th, 2008 at 2:27 am

Didn’t Microsoft just want to slow down Yahoo and just make it look like Microsoft is doing an effort in the cloud computing web 2.0 online apps industry? (”Oh look we tried, they are the ones who didn’t want to.”)

Thing is, all those old giant companies, Microsoft and Intel being the old giant tech ones, know that their usual way of doing business is to be disrupted by cloud computing, marking the end of OS based apps and expensive power consuming hardware. $100 laptops are replacing the $1000 ones, wireless broadband is being made available for free on those white spaces, and by those HSDPA and WiMax incumbants.

Amit Goyal | May 5th, 2008 at 2:42 am

I agree with Alex.

Yahoo! Mail - Make the advertisements less in your face, improve the Spam filter, and make POP access available for free.

Yahoo! Messenger - Make it smaller/Offer a lite version.

del.icio.us - monetize it - and try to come out with more such cool products. Can also try to use it with Answers and other products.

Finance - keep up the good work :)

butterflynxile | May 5th, 2008 at 2:45 am

Mr. Yang…thanks for giving me a good laugh…I require comic relief with my java, as I dress for work…I no longer “Yahoo” other than to occasionally visit friends in chat. I stopped using your email - it sucks. I stop using your search engine - it sucks. I stopped blogging because, well it sucks.

As for the hostile take-over by MicroShaft? Since I don’t use their products either (other than the OS), both of you can continue to , well suck…

Moise | May 5th, 2008 at 2:47 am

Jerry Yang, negotiator of the year

Krishna Srinivasan | May 5th, 2008 at 3:01 am

Jerry,

Yahoo is great. waiting for some great announcement ahead.

Venkatesh Varalu | May 5th, 2008 at 3:03 am

True as many said.

Also, the problem with Yahoo is that you innovate and start things. but you fail to make innovations/ improvements in the service…

For example.. Yahoo was one of the first companies to come up with

1. Online photos…(Yahoo Photos)… but i never saw enhancements from the initial launch…
2. Online Storage… (Yahoo briefcase..) The briefcase is still the same.. i doubt, if there are engineers still working on it…

and more..

You start well, but fail to improve continously.

Luhmann | May 5th, 2008 at 3:34 am

I’ve long felt that Yahoo understood openess and collaboration better than Google. Although del.icio.us and flickr were acquisitions rather than something developed in-house, these are my two favorite web applications and I feel that their purchase reflects Yahoo’s outlook. There are also other projects I don’t use, like Yahoo’s open source code database, which reflect the same spirit.

I can’t imagine any of these surviving under Microsoft - a company which has openly fought against openness around the world.

I’m glad Yahoo stuck up for itself and its users. I feel proud to be a user of Yahoo services and I hope that the lesson Yahoo learned from this is not to be more like Microsoft, but to be true to its own vision.

The China Angel Investor | May 5th, 2008 at 3:44 am

As a software vendor based on Microsoft platform, I strongly support you to leave Microsoft as far away as possible. What Microsoft does over the years is really evil in the software industry and we all hate Microsoft badly. It is in every one’s best interest to prevent Microsoft from dominating the web again. Otherwise, Microsoft will continue to be a disaster for the whole world.

Please stand bravely enough to disregard those greedy investors and stakeholders. They just care about money. They do not care about mission and justice. I know the battle with Microsoft has been very hard for you for the past months and will continue to be very bloody in the following months, I wish you the best.

Aditya Sehgal | May 5th, 2008 at 3:49 am

1) Fix your messenger.
2) Fix your mail.

and when I say “Fix”, all I really want are the basic functions. Let me chat & be connected to my friends via the messenger. I do not want to know the Sports or listen to radio at the same time.

Do one thing and do it correct. Learn from Google. Their messenger & email have not even the half the features that your products have. Yet they let me do what I want to do. They dont interfere.

Patrick Grote | May 5th, 2008 at 4:11 am

You should have sold. You still don’t have a solid plan for competing with Google, which is where your entire focus should be.

Quit playing in the social Web 2.0 sandbox. Listen to your CURRENT customers, especially those who pay for services. You have shown that people will be for good, solid services (Yahoo mail, Flickr). Dedicate your resources to three things: 1) Search - Google is growing fat and lazy. You can still out tech them. 2) Paid customer satisfaction - Listen to these people. Build more services for people like them. 3) News. Screw the social aspect of your news. No one really wants to comment on news stories, and the page views from the ads on those comments don’t pay much. Make news easier and stickier.

One last thing … whip out the pocketbook and buy a few solid blog networks. You need to augment the news services you use. Heck, buy CNET.

Don’t buy into the social fads.

Nabil | May 5th, 2008 at 4:20 am

Mr. Yang, You are not going anywhere fast. Good luck to you and poor shareholders.

Kevin Heisler | May 5th, 2008 at 4:35 am

OK so now what? The clear path you outline needs to address search. The comments here prove how search engines have changed the way people surf, browse and “live” online.

As the sheer volume of media available online explodes exponentially, search engines will be more valuable than ever to consumers.

Michael Thompson | May 5th, 2008 at 4:37 am

Really, Mr. Yang? You and Filo giving the high five to each other when MSFT dropped the deal? What high school behavior! How arrogant and plain stupid. Here I sit, while pre-market trades at $22, and reflect on what a reckless and incompetent way you handled this deal, taking it to an end. Now the shares are $22 and dropping.

Undervalued bid? What utter nonsense. It hasn’t been at the bid level for THREE YEARS! That’s the incompetence you, your board and your executives have demonstrated.

Your job now is to beg MSFT to reinstate the bid for $33; otherwise, step down, have your board members step down, or face the consequences of shareholder revolt and governmental involvement for your wantonly reckless behavior and complete disregard for maximizing shareholder value, which would have been selling at $33, even $31. You have no takers, no better alternatives, other than your foolish, flowery, meaningless words.

Millions of shareholders and their investment have been destroyed by your incompetent choices and greed.

Chris | May 5th, 2008 at 4:41 am

It all boils down to one thing - Yahoo needs to provide better service, with greater user experience.

I believe the guys at yahoo totally forgot what worked for them in the beginning. Many might say that times have change, and that’s true, but sometime change can be a bad thing.

Yahoo needs to just get back to its core strength of its business, and stop competing with Google; they’re so busy trying to figure out what’s Google’s next move - they providing poor user experience to their customers.

I’ve not idea how it feels like to work at Yahoo - but it feels like everything now is all about money and being on top.

What happen to the days when it was all about the passion and then being #1 came naturally without even realizing it…then the money. Come guys - lets some life back into Yahoo!

Timothy Sykes | May 5th, 2008 at 4:53 am

Jerry, you forget blogging should never be mistaken for sugarcoated PR language. Gotta take the money and run, with enough time, energy and practice, you might just be able to become a real blogger

David Howell | May 5th, 2008 at 4:55 am

Have you seen the share price for Yahoo over the past 5 years? Have you seen the share price for google since it went public? This represents, very well, how Yahoo has competed with Google and how it has created NEGATIVE value for shareholders. Dear Mr. Yang, You had the opportunity to provide your shareholders and dying company with a somewhat respectable exit. A %70 premium sat in your lap and you had the ARROGANCE to ask for more. This is a bigger crime commited against shareholder than the crimes of Enron and Tyco. You had better disclose, in full and very soon, exactly how it is that you intend on bringing Yahoo’s shares to the fair value of “$37.”
This is an amazing blunder

Elise McClintick | May 5th, 2008 at 5:03 am

Say it ain’t so Jerry. Your stock in premarket this morning is down 25 per cent. You and Filo certainly showed “um” at Microsoft! You’re getting ready to buy back a heap of Yhoo stock, right? Or those big institutional investors (Capital Research,Legg Mason, Barclays) are going to buy up all those shares tanking today at right? Or you’re getting ready to announce a big Google contract, or a deal with AOL(heaven help us) or????????

Gerry | May 5th, 2008 at 5:11 am

As a shareholder, I am very unhappy to see that you could not work something out with Microsoft. Yahoo is fading fast! Once again, Yang has disappointed shareholders.

john | May 5th, 2008 at 5:13 am

I have used Yahoo mail since RocketMail days. I don’t like Google’s gmail because I am afraid they will get too much info about my online activities (peeking my email, web search, etc.).

China is an area that Yahoo can kick Google’s butt. I am surprised that jerry you did not mention it.

Best wishes.

Longtime Tech Guy | May 5th, 2008 at 5:15 am

Check these quotes with your OWN PEOPLE!

“I am in shock.”

“I don’t know if we won or we lost. I think we lost.”

“I don’t love that it was Microsoft, but I think everyone thought $33 was a pretty good offer from a pretty good tech company.”

“Having to face my staff tomorrow will not be so much fun and I need some Prozac, since I don’t know what I can say to them about how our leadership is going to get our company going again.”

“Where’s the Jelly memo when you need it?”

Marky | May 5th, 2008 at 5:44 am

It’s going to be difficult with the press only interested in the losses of shareholders and not the technologies of the company. I am looking forward to the merging of all the seperate Yahoo! technologies into a single whole.

Perhaps with AIR you can better create seamless desktop/online apps?

In the meantime and given the recent events, please don’t forget that not all of Yahoo!’s users are Windows based. Don’t forget Mac, Linux (including Nokia Internet Tablets) and Symbian users.

We all want to share in the Yahoo! future regardless of device and platform. Please aim to make your products more cross-platform going forward!

Oh and if that job to help you do this hasn’t yet been put aside, remember me when you do! :-)

Marky

Sir Alien | May 5th, 2008 at 5:50 am

Don’t forget not all your users are Americans and not people speak English.

Try to create more International content from day 1 going forward.

Alex | May 5th, 2008 at 6:25 am

Jerry,

This is the end of our journey together.. We had some bad times, some good times, but its about time I start having some Google times…

The reason I am closing - as of today - my Yahoo account is quite simple… Google is just… better.. I tried to wait, I tried to be patient, but… time is up my friend…

So long…

A new-born Googler…

Dan | May 5th, 2008 at 6:42 am

Jerry, are we back to $37 this morning?

jive | May 5th, 2008 at 6:45 am

Hmmm. Interesting post. The prospect that you will open up Yahoo services to be more developer friendly and social is an appealing idea. Now we await the execution. I would love to be able to tie my domain to the yahoo mail interface and calendar, like google apps for your domain.

If you can focus on what people do on the web: read mail, manage contacts, post photos, chat and comment, socialize etc and have this available in one easy to use centralized place that doesn’t kill my browser… then I’m game. Right now, I use Google apps for your domain, Netvibes, google widgets (because yahoo widgets eats loads or resources). But also use delicious and YM…

Purchase Netvibes, Twitter, Plaxo & Facebook (or Myspace). Tie delicious, Flicker, Mail, YM and Calendar, and these new services in one centralized place thats easy for us to use.

Above all, listen to us, your consumer, because we use your products and have specific wants, habits, usage etc.

drob | May 5th, 2008 at 6:52 am

Feeling compelled to comment.

First: Congratulations. You’ve always fought for what you thought was the right thing to do and in this case I think you did the right thing. Fighting for long-term value is commendable and in this case justified (IMHO).

Second: Thank you for making the Web a better place.

I bled purple once and I’d be proud to do it again.

Jason Bogovich | May 5th, 2008 at 6:53 am

As I’ve said before, I’ll say it again, Yahoo is a huge value to users on the internet. The huge amount of sites that Yahoo! has out there that are user centric is staggering. Jerry, ignore all the day traders and concentrate on your consumers and you know that your company will do awesome. I know there are people who bet wrong on Friday and of course they are upset, but any huge merger was bound to make the internet less of a cool place. There are a lot of people out there who want the internet to be as open as possible, just like you said Jerry.

Paul Anthony | May 5th, 2008 at 6:54 am

Congratulations on warding off Microsoft - through pumping everything into making Yahoo *look* like a more profitable company, with ways of making additional revenue.

“Our first quarter was probably one of the most exciting quarters in our history ”

Yes, you aren’t wrong there, but you can’t help but feel that it was when the pressure was put on by MS, not as a result of gaining focus through natural means.

Lets hope that Yahoo finds means of gaining further search ground, by way of innovation - not by the pressure of a loaming takeover.

Tom S | May 5th, 2008 at 7:03 am

Hi Jerry,

Nice job…

Now will you please buy my 500 shares at $31.00

I’m mean it’s a great deal for you since your stock is worth $37.00 as you say.

And now ask yourself,
is it your company that you think is worth the extra 5 bucks or your foolish pride?

This is not your company anymore. Remember you went public so you could cash in or cash out I should say.

You’re supposed to take the best interests of everyone not yourself.

Very dissappointed…

Blasso | May 5th, 2008 at 7:08 am

Funny. Why don’t you and your top-notch board put all your cash on the table and pony up, if you’re so convinced.

Yeah. I thought so.

Waqas Khan | May 5th, 2008 at 7:12 am

Well, I hope all these past events sum up to something good for Yahoo… and most of all the end users in the form of a more rejuvenated, fresh, renovated Yahoo which does listen to its users.

Yahoo! this is your Last Chance!

Neville | May 5th, 2008 at 7:16 am

Here are some funny points I will like to bring up regarding the comments made here. Alex and Amit you both are end users but your websites aren’t hosted by Yahoo. So how are you helping increase the bottom line? Using all of Yahoo’s FREE services won’t save the CEO’s job. =)

As far as Yahoo goes, it’s best offering are its Fantasy Sports products. And you know what, those are FREE too. Go figure.

So to Mr. Stanford CEO, I don’t know what plan you are trying to implement, but $33/share was a great offer from Microsoft. With all the new startup web-based ventures and the current web content leaders in Google, Ebay, and Microsoft, how in the world do you expect to increase both market share and shareprice? Enjoy the displeasure from your employees and shareholders.

So lets look at the bottom line.

EBay better than Yahoo Shopping
Google Advertising better than Yahoo Advertising
Facebook and MySpace better than Yahoo 360

And you think $33/share wasn’t fair value?

Elslucho | May 5th, 2008 at 7:18 am

Mr. Yang,

Although I am a devoted Yahoo fan for more than 6 years, there has to be a creative path that gets Yahoo back on its tracks. You organization has grown, your users have grown, the creativity has not. However, that does not mean the product intended to be deliver is bad; there is simply a need for strategic thinking and creativity. I am glad to see that the MS takeover failed, and hope that from these scenarios people learn to listen. Frankly, I am looking forward to seeing Yahoo succeed, period! It is time to look at what can be achieved, rather than to sit and wait for miracles. In these weak financial times is best to review the outlook for the future and see the result.

Good luck and I know Yahoo will eventually be what it is meant to be!

Slucho

Icyb1u | May 5th, 2008 at 7:21 am

I have been a Yahoo user since since 2000, when I finally dropped dial up, AOL, and decided to get Cable Internet. Yahoo was the first freemail I signed up for, and I liked their portal better than MSN. There are a lot of services I don’t use that Yahoo offers. There are some things that have always used that Microsoft offers. There are some things I wish Yahoo would bring back, and there are some things I’m so glad they improved on.

I’m not one of those who believes that Microsoft is the big bad bully, and we must protect other internet companies from them. However, Yahoo has been my homepage for eight years now, through 5 different computers, 3 boyfriends, and a husband. I build computers in my spare time, and I always set my clients homepage to Yahoo before I give it over to them. It’s like a christening. You can always get a ping from Yahoo too. I remember a time when sites weren’t always dependable, weren’t always up. Yahoo, wasn’t one of those, and you knew if Yahoo was down, then something was seriously wrong with the Internet.

As much as I like Microsoft products, I would hate to see Yahoo’s individualism and uniqueness get swept up in the big conglomerate. Hindsight is 20/20 and I’m sure if Ted Turner could go back, he would have fought against the AOL Time Warner merger instead of embracing it. I think stockholders need to have a little more faith in their long term investment, instead of trying to make the quick cash.

Alamgir Kahn | May 5th, 2008 at 7:23 am

The major issue Yahoo seems to be going through is what happened to Apple under Sculley(sp?)–lots of products all over the map with no single strategy or direction.

Here’s a question for Yahoo: What’s your core competancy? Google’s answer is simple: Search. Even MS can answer this (though it doesn’t want to): OS. What’s the answer for Yahoo?

Yahoo needs to pick (find?) direction and strategy and stick with it. The key thing to do is _consolidate_ the huge amount of properties all over the web under different names and banners and figure out how they relate to Yahoo’s strategy. Better fold in the things that work, and spin off those that don’t.

MyMesh.com | May 5th, 2008 at 7:30 am

There’s at least one thing you can do, Jerry — to open up the Y! platform more, more API’s, and more online storage space that users can actually make use of, and be proud of your service. Without the loyal users there will be no Yahoo!!

Randy | May 5th, 2008 at 7:51 am

This whole thing makes me seriously worried about Yahoo’s future.

I have all my bookmarks in Delicious and all my photos on Flickr…I think I’ll be looking for alternatives very shortly. Which completely sucks because I love both services so much.

I hope the best for Yahoo, but I do think things are going to be very ugly before they get better

…oh, and you don’t think MS is going to go away so peacefully do you?

Jack | May 5th, 2008 at 7:53 am

As a user and not a shareholder, I am glad you guys did not give in to Microsoft.

I am hoping this ordeal has truly spurred you guys to get things moving and embrace the open everything strategy that has been suggested in the past.

pippo | May 5th, 2008 at 8:17 am

r. Yang just explain what is better: 33$ for sure today or $24 with a promise of 37 in 3 years?
are you sure you can do your math?
maybe you don’t care about money but do you think of other shareholders too?
what do you say to peaple who own yahoo shares and wanted those 33$ and now have 30% less?

Jigar Shah | May 5th, 2008 at 8:25 am

This was really a step to save the web and innovation. remember what MS did to hotmail…it took years to update the stuff (until others got ahead of it). MS never innovates anything. Only purpose of this takeover was to beat google…not growing msn network. Yahoo is still little open (I would prefer more openness), MS is totally against it. I think now its yahoo turn to fireback…

- Update Yahoo mail quickly…Add stuff from zimbra acquisitions (Don’t wait for complete bundle)Provide better speed and browser compatibility.

- Update other APIs and service like mybloglog and media player for web quickly…

- Push services where others have not yest entered. Like Music…and be the king.

- Don’t think outsourcing too much….just for quick fix is fine. Believe in your talent. You have many of them.

All the best Jerry. I am really feeling good after this is over. MS is innovation killer. You saved the web :)

Dave Newton | May 5th, 2008 at 8:25 am

The Internet business is the ultimate Tower of Babel. It’s got everything. The Wall Street game, the techie world, the user world, the news cacophony. All at the speed of light. So many voices, so much noise. Pull yourselves together and focus, Jerry. The world needs an independent, innovating Yahoo!

kenzoida | May 5th, 2008 at 8:34 am

Sorry to see that people are letting their personal feelings get in the way of running a business, that includes Yang and his gredy bozos. Sadly, Microsoft represented the last and only hope Yahoo had of surviving on the internet. Shareholders, wait for the stock to rebound slightly then dump, it ain’t ever going back up. $37 my ass.

Ed | May 5th, 2008 at 8:37 am

I am sure that you made a lot of Microsoft employees and shareholders happy by rejecting the Redmond company’s bid. As is plainly obvious to everyone (based on the numbers and comments above), Yahoo! is a fading company. I don’t doubt that the pro-Microsoft crowd is celebrating right now. I’ll bet no one in Redmond wants to go through the pain of integrating with a company that has undergone an engineering talent-exodus and is becoming irrelevant in it’s core technologies.

So as a Microsoft shareholder, thank you for acting in my best interests. Had you accepted Microsoft’s offer it would most certainly have crippled Ballmer and company.

I hope you do well in the fight against Google and Microsoft, since competition is always better for the consumer. However, given performance over the past several years, the bright future you speak about in your post may never be realized.

sgs | May 5th, 2008 at 8:38 am

HIGH FIVES FOR EVERYONE!

You’re now Google biaatch and not Microsoft’s!!!

Vishal | May 5th, 2008 at 8:58 am

As a Yahoo user ….I think Yahoo have made a bold and wise decision to stay away from the cc Microsoft . It would have being a disaster for the users … and all the innovations and Yahoo’s open source strategy could have gone down the drain .

Joseph Hunkins | May 5th, 2008 at 9:02 am

(I’m a YHOO shareholder)

Jerry although I remain a huge fan of Yahoo’s great potential as the online environment evolves, it strains reasonable economic assumptions to suggest that the market has been consistently undervaluing the company so much. $33 was an excellent offer all things considered. This was not about valuations - rather it was about MS controlling “your” company. One has to give you credit for sticking to your guns about a “free” Yahoo, but it would sure be nice to hear about some aggressive and innovative plans for the future or some huge cost cutting measures that will make Yahoo more profitable. I can’t help but think that a lot more passion and energy went into fighting Microsoft than has been going into innovation at Yahoo - is that an unreasonable assumption?

Alexis Kauffmann - Artigos para Festas | May 5th, 2008 at 9:02 am

People told you everything you needed to listen, Jerry, I just hope you take your time to read…

M J Webb | May 5th, 2008 at 9:11 am

Enough with the lip service. Put your stock price where your mouth is! You claim $33 a share grossly undervalues YHOO? Prove it! Not years from now. Now! Outsource search to GOOG, buyback stock, and changed your stupid, ugly, outdated logo! Yahoo is stuck in the 90’s because of you, Jerry Yang, and Terry Semel, the botoxed idiot from Hollywood you hired and fired.

How are you going to turn this aging hippy around? How about coming out and announcing Yahoo’s new strategy. You can start by appointing Sue Decker CEO.

Some Thoughts | May 5th, 2008 at 9:13 am

Jerry, I wish you good luck!

A few thoughts on the current Yahoo/Google test for you. I am sure you know those already, but seeing it from the outside and having relevant experience with both companies (Yahoo/Google), I wanted to share them:

(1) If Yahoo would quit monetization (and handing their own properties over for monetization to Google would essentially mean this), this would be bad for the Internet industry. It would mean a monopoly for Google on that crucial part of online advertising.

(2) It might be good for Yahoo in the short term - it’s common knowledge that Google usually performs better on search monetization (”volvo x70 car dealer boston”) , because their entire system is based on search and based on the long tail. This does not mean, however, that Yahoo underperforms all the time. Yahoo’s system - from the old GoTo days - has been built around high-paying keywords with large volume, so they often even outperform Google considerable on those (”car dealer”). Depending on the application, the latter is often more relevant, and Yahoo has some clear advantages for publishers, too.

(3) The move would be bad for Yahoo in the long term. They’d be a publisher without advertising sales. Image New York Times or TIME Magazine being 100% dependent on a print advertising sales agency which owns a monopoly on advertising sales? Unthinkable! But that’s exactly what would happen. Google would dictate terms, policies, usage areas, no matter on how good their contract would be phrased.

(4) There is an inherent inventory / conflict of interest problem which Yahoo might not have considered… well, I’m sure they have, but it might have been pushed to the back of their mind in the heat of the moment. We can be pretty sure from publishers’ experiences, Google stockholder reports with their focus on TAC (traffic acquisition costs) and Google’s general strategic direction that one of Google’s agendas is to funnel more an more advertiser budgets and resources to their own sides opposed to third-party sites. Seeing it from Google’s perspective, it’s makes of course sense: why have an advertiser spend 1 $ on a partner site, where they make like 30-40 cents, and not on their own site, where they reap the entire 1 $. This inherent conflict of interest by the way has been leading to publishers fleeing DoubleClick after their acquisition by Google, as reported last week in a European newspaper.

Marky | May 5th, 2008 at 9:16 am

>>r. Yang just explain what is better: 33$ for sure today or $24 with a promise of 37 in 3 years?
are you sure you can do your math?
maybe you don’t care about money but do you think of other shareholders too?
what do you say to peaple who own yahoo shares and wanted those 33$ and now have 30% less?

These comments are typical of the shareholders who care little for the company, the products and the customers.

Microsoft would have destroyed what Yahoo! is for the users. It is they who would have lost when denied the choice of online services. Presently there are three main players. Had Microsoft had their way there would be two and experience has shown they mess up most things they touch destroying that which they desired.

Competition, not monopolies encourage inovation. Google has set the standard to beat but Yahoo!’s products are more polished and refined. M$’s products are messy because they lack vision and direction. They have billions to sort it out but can’t so better to take down the competition and be happier that way.

Yahoo! deserves to be free because it helps build better services through competing with other services. I agree with some points above though. Yahoo! do need to focus more and concentrate on a vision. It may have a decent search engine but Google is where most people go so use the other services and find a killer app to bind them all and make people want to come to it and make a big noise so the online community know it’s there and the technology jounalists take notice. Take the agenda back and show them that M$’s vision is not the one Yahoo! needs and do not let the money grabbing shareholders who wanted to sell to M$ take the agenda here. It’s going to be rough for a while but show the world and them why Yahoo! matters.

Ultimately it’s about the users - not the shareholders!

DAS | May 5th, 2008 at 9:25 am

Better polish up your resume. You have proven yourself unworthy of command.

Shree Mulay | May 5th, 2008 at 9:25 am

Peace,

Microsoft’s potential acquisition of Yahoo would’ve been the best thing for Microsoft and the worst thing for everyone else. It would’ve put more pieces of the www pie into Microsoft’s hands than anyone could really realize. And certainly would’ve been case for the anti monopoly courts to hammer away at appropriately had it happened, though it seems that these things can be avoided in the US courts these days by Microsoftian approach, while the EU courts seem a bit more immune. I digress - Yahoo has a wealth of resources available which are more unique than the conglumerate assimilate by Google, Microsoft, and AOL respectively. Indeed, an AOL\YAHOO tie up would’ve yeilded the most interesting results.

The problem that jointly plagues both AOL\Yahoo is that both companies have all this cool stuff but no way to cohesively merge all of their entities into a single package. Ebay sorta’ is facing the same problem with their ownership of Skype. Somehow, the folks at both Microsoft, Google, and Adobe have fared better in their overall assimilation processes.

Nonetheless, I truely believe that Yahoo still has every opportunity to play ball. They need to find a way to build a cohesive structure into their whole YKingdom. I believe I have an worthwile solution. A brand new O\S to pull the carpet from under the feet of Microsoft, Apple, and Linux entities. And, I think it would provide a nice ‘belt’ to tie everything available in together. It would be a pleasure to share my ideas with them at Yahoo.

Well, I had to promote my idea, OS Waterfalls. Be on the lookout for it in the future, because eventually, it will be made. It is but the natural evolution of the Modern Operating System. Would love for it to get funding(hint, hint -> Yahoo).

Well, that’s my two cents…

Shree Mulay

Michael Martinez | May 5th, 2008 at 9:26 am

The search industry would implode if Ballmer’s insane proposal were carried through. Combining Microsoft and Yahoo! would only make sense if all the resources of both organizations were pressed into supporting one brand rather than two, and there just would not be enough time to do that before Google surged forward.

Yahoo! needs to innovate without Microsoft and Microsoft needs to innovate without Yahoo!.

All the investors care about is making money on your stock, but hundreds of millions of search users would be left with fewer choices and right now the Google search experience is just not what it should be.

This is an opportunity for Yahoo! to overhaul its search interface and make a difference.

Felipe de Lucio | May 5th, 2008 at 9:27 am

Yawho?

fredb | May 5th, 2008 at 9:31 am

Hey Jerry - get a few big investors to stand up and support this move -

rather than pro-yahoo homepage guys with no real vested interest in the company, i’d like to see some people with real assets invested in the company stand up and say, ‘hell yeah’ this was a wonderful move for the owners of this company… i feel for the employees at Yahoo! They’ve worked hard, might be sitting on a pile of options at $30 a share… will they ever get above water? who knows…

chris L | May 5th, 2008 at 9:37 am

Jerry, I bought Yahoo stock on Friday thinking that you’d be smart enough to sell at a higher offer. Now you owe me for my losses. Can I pick up a check from you in person for your ineptitude?

Gary B | May 5th, 2008 at 9:40 am

Microsoft has it right! Clearly, Yahoo’s value is no where near $37 a share. At best, if Yahoo can earn $.70 a share this fiscal year and grow earnings at 10 to 15% in the next two years, the current value of this stock is $23 a share. Any missteps by Yahoo will results in a decline in shareholder value from its current level.

Olman | May 5th, 2008 at 9:41 am

Good bye Yahoo….and 2000 shares at $29.50

dj | May 5th, 2008 at 9:51 am

Good job Jerry! I don’t see why you shouldn’t celebrate. You did all of us a favor. I think the cultures of Yahoo! and Microsoft would have clashed, bringing down both companies. I understand how some individual shareholders might be upset with their short-term stock value being unstable, but I can’t believe how near-sighted some of the industry analysts are. It amazes me that they can’t see the improvements that have been happening on Yahoo! And I think the strategic move to work with Google is ingenious. It would improve Yahoo’s financial performance, and allow Yahoo! to focus on display ad business, and stay a strong leader in that field.

Pissed off Investor | May 5th, 2008 at 9:57 am

FIRE Jerry Yang!!

Yahoo is doomed. It can’t make money. Jerry, you should thank your lucky stars that Microsoft even offered you $33. Yahoo is the next AOL. It’s has been behind the game in search, social networking, etc.

ValleyGrunt | May 5th, 2008 at 10:12 am

Jerry:

From all accounts, you are a class act, and not irresponsible, which leads me to believe that you honestly think you can revive Yahoo.

However, buddy, you need to start executing, and delivering fast. Yahoo has quite a huge and loyal user base in most areas except Search, where Google cleaned everyone’s clock. Don’t throw that away.

My $0.02: Go on a shopping spree, and acquire a whole bunch of small, innovative startups that would integrate well with YHOO, and in the process also acquire key talent that can reinvigorate the company.
Flickr is your classic case of an acquisition turning out to be a big hit; you need more of those.

Good Luck, there are plenty of us rooting for you.

avidsitejunkie | May 5th, 2008 at 10:16 am

Jerry
That Y! warded off MSFT is good, never mind the sour ones complaining about the stock price, that’s shortsightedness and greed. MSFT is increasingly irrelevant in this new internet order and it’s good to see them stew. I am a Yahoo Mail and Y Msgr user for the last 8 years and I reserve my “hot live spam mail” account for, well, spam.

However, Y! is slow, old and has become lazy as others have put it. Somewhere along the way, it has become bureaucratic (this coming from a number of people I know who work at Y!) and has stopped innovating. You missed the bus on social networking, Web2.0, open APIs and lost on search. I have heard about wrong people promoted and I personally know some really bad apples that were hired into your company.

- Whip up the troops, get the startup mentality and execution going, fire a few people that are there for the job and you should see some results.

- Y! should now focus on mobile and rule mobile. Yahoo Go 3.0 is one of the best that’s out there, go ahead invest and improve it. Goog might have the first mover advantage here with android, but it’s still not a proven strategy.

- Search on mobile will be very different from search on web, go figure how to get it right. Voice search was a good product decision, though the technology comes from elsewhere.

- Make relevant products and services, the social networking fad might be over, so stay away from that. However, improve the properties you have - Flickr, deliciuos etc. come to mind.

- Get your R&D moving to innovate on long haul technology and products; Yahoo doesnt figure on cloud commputing, there is no buzz on mobile etc. etc.

kc_cramer | May 5th, 2008 at 10:19 am

I have had some issues with Yahoo corporate decisions as a user of a couple of its services, and am not a shareholder; but I am extraordinarily impressed with the board and management decision NOT to be swallowed and subverted by Microsoft. This is one decision I hope will stand as a milestone for a brighter future for Yahoo, hopefully as a strong and independent entity.

I once endured an experience of working for a company that was swallowed up by a Microsoft-like monster corporation. I would not recommend the experience to anyone. In the process of the swallower’s digestive strategies, we were forceably merged with another company that had been swallowed at the same time. Within a year what was left of us co-swallowees was a mess (those digestive juices will do that), and massive downsizing at the hands of the incompetencies of our swallower had essentially destroyed what had been two thriving companies.

It’s too bad Yahoo can’t successfully sue Microsoft for the damage it has already caused, and will probably continue to cause them. After all, if Microsoft can’t swallow Yahoo, they might as well go ahead and eliminate it from threatening its monopolization and control of the Internet. Hmm…maybe that was the plan all along?

Joe | May 5th, 2008 at 10:20 am

Mr. Yang

I think you really don’t give a s………for your company or people who have trust Yahoo and invested money on it.
Maybe because you have $2 billions in your private bank account, but you should think about people like me, who have invested £200000.00 and now will have to work a whole year to recover a loss caused by you, who must understand a lot about computers but nothing about business and investments.
You must consider that it is a serious business and not a simple child game ” I don’t like Microsoft and don’t wanna sell my company for them “.
I hope that next board meeting thay put you out of the company’s board.

Hope you can sleep well !!!!!!!
Joe

Asim Zafir | May 5th, 2008 at 10:23 am

The only company that has benefited from YAHOO-MICROSOFT saga was no one but GOOGLE. There stock went about 11% up today and Yahoo faced a downside in stock market and also raised lot of expectations for the investors, making things far more tougher then it was couple of months before. Probably it was successful Microsoft strategy to make a implicit impact on Yahoo and its investors. I think if Yahoo is not able to deliver soon, it will get their investors very much frustrated and force them to make very tough decision - and might bring further negative effect on the company as whole. Microsoft’s attempt to bid on yahoo in my opinion has caused a negative advertisement on entire Yahoo and will have long lasting effect. Yahoo needs to understand, its not product any more, but its all how its been pictured in end users mindset. They need to make every thing possible to stay away from negative marketing/advertisement effect - which has given them a very severe impact this time.

The goal for Yahoo is very eminent, they need to catch up with Google…. and it can’t really happen with making innovative products instead there has to be something done that has a psychological impact on the investor market. Microsoft aimed right to peer up with Yahoo, as their goal was also to catch up with Google and attract attentions of investors on Google’s end. Had this deal was settled it would have caused a massive impact on Google’s business and forced them to do something different. and probably these companies (yahoo/microsoft) would have attracted lot of investors towards them. Microsoft and Yahoo has one rival and that is Google. Microsoft withdrawl has given Google a further boost in their business and will continue to do so, had Steve Balmer would have kept this negotiation hanging for couple of months, I anticipate things would have resulted positive for his company, specifically because this move of his would have raised a lot of questions and curiosity for google investors with a possible pause in putting more stakes in google.

I anticipate investors should now forget about Yahoo and Microsoft for sometime and closely watch what Google’s doing next. I anticipate a very strategic acquisition coming from them in near future, that would massively boost their business and will bring tough deals for big giants sitting on communications side of business.

API Man | May 5th, 2008 at 10:23 am

I’m glad you guys didn’t sell out to Microsoft. As a shareholder it pains me to say that but as a developer and internet user I know its better for the long run. Microsoft is usually behind the curve in innovation. On the other hand, Yahoo has a track record of innovation and as a valley favorite will continue to fund the best ventures and ideas for the internet. With all that said, I hope you folks capitalize on this and really find your vision and execute the hell out of it. I suggest you make more of your site available to the developer community. We make the apps and services that your future visitors may use and may end up being the next big thing for you.

Shelby Moore III | May 5th, 2008 at 10:27 am

The only future is to eliminate the server. We will be doing precisely that. Google’s paradigm is peaking. You should have taken the $ and run to the next exponential seed. Let Microsoft have the dying paradigm. Yes social is the future, but 100% decentralized. Goodbye OpenSocial, MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, ad-sponsored centralized bandwidth, etc..

Adnan | May 5th, 2008 at 10:27 am

Somebody commented on fixing your mail.

I’ve been using Yahoo mail for what like 8 - 10 years now. All this time, only twice did I have a problem with it, I contacted support and they got back to me in like a day if I can remember correctly and resolved the issue I was having.

I mean I literally go to Yahoo.com like what 40 times a day to see my mail and open my mail like close to 30 times a day.

I think it’s the search that you guys should concentrate on , I mean Yahoo has a great search, but like I suggested earlier, IMO those tracking codes are a turn off.

It makes the search kind of heavy.

I hope your new R & D office in Bangalore cooks up some exciting recipes.

Elliott | May 5th, 2008 at 10:31 am

The problem is that a founder can’t make a business decision like selling his company to an aggressive competitor without letting personal feelings about the company interfere. Yahoo is slowly dying; the only way to make the company work is to break into pieces, sell off the ones that don’t work–Search, hosting, etc–and develop the ones that do–Flickr, Answers, Finance.

Jake | May 5th, 2008 at 10:39 am

Don’t forget The Day of the Donut. I think that was the highlight. Plus, needing to buy everyone in the world a donut next April surely deterred Microsoft since that could have cost billions of dollars.

Tom C | May 5th, 2008 at 11:05 am

Anyone else find it ironic that Yahoo has a picture at the top of the page with an image of Yahoo Photos which has been shut down for some time now. It’s just another example of Yahoo’s lack of direction.

Dominic | May 5th, 2008 at 11:06 am

I’m a shareholder and I support what you did. I have more faith in Yahoo! succeeding as an independent than as part of Microsoft. Frankly, I think MSFT would mess things up.

But that does not mean I am happy with what has been happening over the past few years. The plan that is in place now gives me some confidence, but I am increasingly worried about how the company is neglecting prime assets like Yahoo! Finance.

Yahoo! Finance is a mess. Really, just spend a day looking at it. Then go to any of the other sites and see how far behind you are. You need to put new leadership in charge of Yahoo! Finance, which is in trouble, no matter what your internal stats say.

Personally, I think too much is made of search. I really don’t see a future for keyword searching. Yahoo! should be thinking five or more years out into the future about what search will look like on the semantic web.

Finally, where’s your answer to Google Docs?

MTS | May 5th, 2008 at 11:11 am

Ha! First you guys lost shareholder value when you announced Panama too soon when nobody, and I mean nobody, on the development team thought it would launch on time. Then you walked away from shareholder value this weekend. Brilliant. Glad I sold all my underwater employee shares last week before they sank any further.

Peter | May 5th, 2008 at 11:21 am

I have Yahoo shares for sale at $25.00 per share. if you you Mr. Yang is interested, please contact me . It is an excellent deal, as according to you it worth $37.00.

thank you

JY | May 5th, 2008 at 11:32 am

microsoft’s offer was a distraction to you?

actually you are the distraction to yahoo. all these years your leadership led the company to this position, something that needs help to survive.

its too sad, you were aiming for a higher price and when you dont get it, everything else is a distraction.

give it up jerry, there is nothing you can do to improve yahoo..

Louise | May 5th, 2008 at 11:53 am

Glad the deal fell through. Don’t get sucked up by Microsoft. They will only recreate Yahoo! in their own image. End-users who have stayed with Yahoo! over the years have done so largely because of the innovative and useful services Yahoo! has provided. Try to get the company on track so the pressure is off to merge or be taken over by a monster.

TiHuan | May 5th, 2008 at 12:07 pm

Hmm…I think MS will consequently get Yahoo! for sure :D
But I don’t really want it happen. I mean, MS is so huge that letting it get Yahoo! will only decrease competition on Internet and that’s not what we end-users want. (Will government stop the merge between MS and Yahoo! ?)

Overall I feel MS is an evil company and I don’t want to see it gets any bigger :(

Please fight for end users Mr. Yang!!!!!

Elise McClintick | May 5th, 2008 at 12:09 pm

This expresses my feelings perfectly:

“Meanwhile, ThinkPanmure analyst William Morrison lowered his rating for Yahoo shares to “Sell” from “Accumulate” and cut his price target to $20 from $31 in a client note.

The analyst said Yahoo’s rejection of Microsoft’s bid may likely “go down as one of the more destructive decisions for shareholder value in the history of Internet stocks.”

Duane | May 5th, 2008 at 12:34 pm

I have no idea whether or not the Microsoft deal would have been good for Yahoo — Microsoft hasn’t had any home runs in years either, and they lack innovative products. That being said, I have a lot of friends at Yahoo who have sacrificed a lot of time and effort at Yahoo to make the company what it is today. That being the case, I can’t help but feel a bit bad that most of them, since they are heavily compensated in stock and options, will be forced to endure another few years of hard work in an effort to finally realized the worth from their stock.

I spent a lot of time at Yahoo over the last few years, and pretty much every employee or manager I ever met was always constantly worried about what big brother was doing down the street. And while it’s cliche, you are bound to trip over your own feet if you are always looking over your shoulder.

David Wegman | May 5th, 2008 at 12:35 pm

Dear Mr. Yang:

It is very clear Google is kicking your butt every day and Yahoo! as a company is unable to execute on any sort of a strategic strategy.

Microsoft made an offer last year at $40 a share, this year at $33 a share, and a year from now we will be talking about $23 a share.

Have fun dealing with all the shareholder lawsuits and congrats to the shorts because they are the only people making money on your stock.

Did you forget publicly traded corporations are owned by the shareholders? Did you forget your fiduciary responsibility to your shareholders? Someone said it best in an earlier post, “You have been Yanged”.

-David

Kirk Collins | May 5th, 2008 at 12:45 pm

Where do the shareholders go to sue Yang and kick out the board?

Darnell Clayton | May 5th, 2008 at 1:25 pm

Wow…gotta love the “warmth” from most of these comments.

Hey Yang,

While I am not a Yahoo! fan (you lost me after the China debacle…I have yet to return) I am glad that Microsoft did not absorb you guys as that would have created a duopoly online which in my honest opinion is not a good thing for the internet.

Even though I will continue to use Google, here is my advice for your company:

1) Get rid of the spam in Y! Search. It is very disappointing to see spurious porn pop up in unrelated searches. If you do not find a way to clean this up, you will utterly fail as a company.

2) Expand panama publishing to outside the US: by that I mean allow international bloggers (or blogs with international traffic) to display your ads on their site.

3) Reduce ads in email, IM, etc.: If not, I will be happy using Skype and Gmail.

That’s it for now. For all the disappointed stock holders out there, I feel your pain (no, I don’t own any Y! shares, but losing money is never a good thing).

Perhaps instead of yelling at Yang you could get together and find a way to help Yahoo! get back to $31 or organize a peaceful revolt (online, nonetheless).

Simply venting here will accomplish little.

~Darnell

David Gonzales | May 5th, 2008 at 1:52 pm

Sue them for what? Fighting for their life? Yahoo! doesn’t deserve any of this fluff. Just let them do their own stuff and stop complaining. If you’re so good why don’t you just run your own multi-billion dollar search portal company?

Dave Levine | May 5th, 2008 at 2:10 pm

Mr. Yang,

I admire your fortitude and that you have the strength of character to speak in public like this about your thoughts.

You clearly have some very attractive web properties, including finance.yahoo.com, Flickr, and Del.icio.us.

Why not add to the repertoire with Twitter, Pownce and/or some of the other up and coming web-messaging applications?

If you want to stay ahead of MSFT in its chase and independent, I think your approach of staying ahead of the curve in innovation is a great way to go.

Best of luck.

Peter | May 5th, 2008 at 2:30 pm

Dear Jerry,

We bluffed and we failed… simple as that. Time to think again about the value of Yahoo!…before Google grows too big…

Pierre | May 5th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

For sure if MSFT would buy Yahoo!, I would stop using Yahoo! and switch to Google. A lot of Yahoo! users would do so, because they don’t like MS and because Yahoo! would destroy its image.
Google is a big competitor, but a merged MSFT + Yahoo! would not compete better. Stocks holders that are interested only in short term money could just have sold last week, it is stupid to complain now.

Larry | May 5th, 2008 at 3:19 pm

Thanks for taking care of your shareholders(former a/o today). whats the plan? you had three months to come up with one! Now your talking about looking down the road and seeing your share price @37? when ms offered 33? Less than a additional 10% over a 2 year period? Great performance. At this point i can only hope you and the board get “carried” out on a shareholder revolt!

Bob | May 5th, 2008 at 3:20 pm

Disappointing. You had a great chance to get back in the game and challenge GOOG. Instead, you let your desire for control and perhaps dislike of MSFT color your judgment. Now what? You’re going to outsource to the person who’s been beating you? Lose more good engineers? Try and compete against GOOG with $2.5 billion of cash?

thinker.guy | May 5th, 2008 at 6:35 pm

Jerry,
Some questions for you to ponder.
1) If Yahoo! Search has lost to Google over 20% market share (not ads — pure search) how is it that people in the Search BU have been getting promotions? Search Product Managers seem to run your BU like an owned business. No new Ideas…VPs who try to keep control. Why do product heads get promoted in a failed business???
2) If no great new social platforms came from Platforms Product Managers how is that that directors became VPs or senior directors? You need to hire and promote people who have product ideas get them from facebook maybe?
3) You talk about R&D lab in India. I keep hearing that your Indian employees have no real careers — it is all controlled from US. What crap story are you telling?
You obviously have slept or have been cheated by your own executives who have not told you true stories. Whatever it is, however sad, you can still revive yahoo or sell to Microsoft. Fire directors and vps in product or engineering who have performed only on paper not in reality — that would be a new start.

francine hardaway | May 5th, 2008 at 6:37 pm

Now that you have decided to go it alone, i suggest bringing your products up to the current web standard by taking YahooGroups HTML email out of beta and letting people use it as more of a blogging platform, and making all the other changes that tell me you care about your products and users like you used to. Your search sucks, and you are awfully far behind, but if you steal a few people from GOOG, maybe you can catch up.

Smitty | May 5th, 2008 at 7:11 pm

You folks have to pull the services you offer out of the gutter. There is so much trash in your banner ads and such that no one clicks on them because they are not targeted, honest, or for anything desirable. I have seen the wiggly “You are the 10,000,000th visitor! This is not a joke!” banner ad so many times, it now angers me that this is on the page with my email. And are you really doing anything at all about sp@m? I get sp@m from the same places over and over, having to select it and mark it as sp@m day after day, yet, since they are big advertisers, the messages still come through. This is the reason none of the existing Flickr users wanted to be associated with Yahoo! They were proud of their community, and did not want the neighborhood to go bad. But that happened. If you want to regain the respect of the marketplace, truly determine that you will put some guidelines in place regarding ads and content, and then rigorously police these areas. Then your popularity will return, along with advertisers who want to court your users. Your users will, in turn, want to click on the ads of vendors they can trust for products they are interested in. But you, as the Mayor of this town called Yahoo!, much decide that you’re going to renovate the slums, get the trash out of town, and not let it back in. Otherwise, you’ll become the ghost town that AOL is.

GS | May 5th, 2008 at 7:27 pm

Any deal less than $45/share would be criminal.

The Chinese Yuan and Japanese Yen are vastly undervalued. What prevents the Yuan from going to parity (ie 1 yuan= 1 US dollar)? What prevents the Yen from going from 105 yen to 50 yen ?

Both China and Japan are running huge current account surpluses and their currencies are artifically surpressed.

Alibaba has the potential to be SEVERAL TIMES BIGGER than EBAY considering they serve 1.3 billion chinese and they are a platform for global sourcing. SO IN ADDITION TO ALIBABA APPRECIATING IN TERMS OF YUAN YOU ALSO HAVE TO FACTOR IN THE APPRECIATION OF THE CURRENCY.

Similar calculation needs to be done for Taiwan which has just developed peaceful relations with China.

Similar calculation needs to be done with Japan which is just coming out of 20 year recession.

In summary, Yahoo’s Asian assets are vastly underappreciated.

Yahoo user | May 5th, 2008 at 7:31 pm

Great news!!! the deal didnt fall thru. I am switching to Yahoo search,mail, blog and everything in between, its full throttle support for yahoo, you guys shld remain independant all ur life, i hope it turns out that way.

Good luck guys

Andrew | May 5th, 2008 at 8:13 pm

Thank you for not selling to Microsoft. The internet (though not my bank account) is a better place because of your decision.

Don’t pay attention to all the day traders in these comments–they don’t care at all about anything but themselves. Pay attention to your customers, your employees, and your long term shareholders (IN THAT ORDER!) and everything will be good in the future.

P.S. Now I know why the google corporate blog doesn’t allow comments…

Ankit | May 5th, 2008 at 9:03 pm

Jerry, you’re getting a LOT of pressure to do this, and I don’t agree with it.

First, Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo because they expect it to provide a return on their investment, they expect it to grow. Why let this happen under another company’s ownership when it can be your own?

Second, Microsoft is pushing you and the team around. They are playing the game Mouse Trap, and you are the mouse. Refuse to play the game, let people sue you and put up with it, hire 10 people to take care of it.

If you believe in Yahoo, just like Microsoft does, then maintain control. It’s unfortunate a compromise can’t be worked out - what do they think they’ll do differently that Yahoo can’t on its own?

Randy H | May 5th, 2008 at 9:22 pm

Jerry first, I just want to say thanks to you guys for creating YAHOO I started using yahoo mail in 1999, when the only other big free e-mail service would close off my account every 2 weeks and have a maximum storage limit of only 2mbs, yahoo was 3 to 4 times better than them then and still is now!

I think the culture of MS that made them big in software is what makes them bad at internet services. They can not be truly “free” and innovative as you guys. And the internet would not be as good a place if they had gotten there hands on yahoo.

It appears that somewhere over the past 3 years the last CEO had lost focus of what yahoo’s core competences was i.e. search and mail and this caused some lost of market share, but I believe these services are still better than the competition that is why I use them.

The doom and gloom expressed by some of the other commentators is strange, because the key place to be in any market is among the top 2 or 3 companies in any the industry and even some of the negative commentators have indicated that yahoo is right up there with Google, e-bay and company, which would indicate that the company is a very strong one, also lets not forget the 500,000,000 people who yahoo everyday most of whom including myself would not stay on if MS took over the show.

Peter Lewis | May 5th, 2008 at 9:44 pm

Dear Jerry,

This is not 1996. MSFT did offer a good price. I hope you have something up your sleeve to show everyone, otherwise, I feel this was a bad decision, based more on Ego (of which I have a lot of), than good business sense. Like Mr Schultz at Starbucks, you where in the right place at the right time with the right product, at one point in your life… one of the hardest things to do, is ‘do it again’.

shareholder | May 5th, 2008 at 9:44 pm

Jerry -

All along, through the decision not to buy Google, through the weak video and social networking strategies, through the underwhelming panama efforts, you, Sue Decker and Jeff Weiner were there. Sure, so was Terry, but it was still your watch. Now, almost a year into being CEO (having stepped in after five straight blown quarters under Semel) you are faced with a tremendous opportunity to return value to your shareholders. Your decision? Turn down a 70% premium over what you’re able to deliver through your management. While it’s great that you won the lottery last decade, it’s time to move on and leave the company to businessmen dedicated to creating value for Yahoo! shareholders. You and David did a great thing and will always be rich and a part of history but please, either move on or, as you clearly don’t have any regard whatsoever for your shareholders, take the company private. Should you decide to pursue the latter it appears that most of your shareholders would accept $33 a share - as you believe the stock to be worth $37 a share I’m sure you’ll make out like a bandit!

Sincerely,
Two thousand shares that will support any attempt to oust current management

Jason Hommel | May 5th, 2008 at 11:08 pm

If Yahoo has $2.5 billion, they should invest it into silver. Yes, the physical metal, but not gold. Why silver?

Because there is probably not even $1 billion worth of physical silver available to buy. Thus, Yahoo’s $2.5 billion would turn into $25 billion to $100 billion in about 2-5 years, and they could buy google out.

$2.5 billion / $17/oz. = 147 million oz. of silver.

Total annual investment demand for silver in 2007 was only about 75 million ounces.

Rosh | May 6th, 2008 at 1:13 am

When the world is moving towards an Open Source, patent free(atleast here in europe) and competetive path, why did you talk to microsoft in the first place?

CableCom | May 6th, 2008 at 2:42 am

Yahoo! take your last Chance!

James | May 6th, 2008 at 3:38 am

Jerrry - As an advertiser I have prayed for Yahoo to step up to the plate and make Panama work, but it just keeps getting worse. over 4 years my Google Adwords spend has gone up and up, and Yahoo SM spend down and down.

Everyone loses from yahoo not doing the deal with MS: we almost had a credible threat to Google’s monopoly.

I genuinely think Yahoo is becoming a white elephant. Netscape all over again?

JCPayne | May 6th, 2008 at 4:22 am

Yahoo could buy:

* http://www.ixi.com/
* http://www.ogo.com

and bury Microsoft’s Sidekick

JCPayne | May 6th, 2008 at 4:23 am

YAWN— Here is why Microsoft has no future anyways….

If Micro$shaft makes an operating system (OS) which is stable and people see no need to upgrade, Microsoft’s revenues will plunge—- sharply….

If Micro$shaft makes O/Ses that sucks and it requires people to keep buying OS/es which improve continually (just slightly) some people will become fet-up with paying for non-working OSes from Microsoft and will defect….

So Microsoft can’t win here.

They will either:
1) Push to create an Operating System that runs over the Interent (e.g. you’re computer dials into their computer upon boot up) that you must subscribe to monthly… (But this renders your P.C. useless if the Internet goes down on your PC….) But yet again— more people will defect for Free O/Ses that can be installed locally.

OR-
2) Microsoft can start making Operating Systems that expire on a certain day (Much like your current Virus Scanner company might do.) At which time you’d have to pay every month. Which again may mean some people will get fet-up and will look for alternatives…. No matter what— Microsoft can’t win they will never be able to make huge profits like they did in the past… Microsoft in the technology world is becoming a Netscape….

Aleem | May 6th, 2008 at 5:26 am

The game here is the press shifting focus on company valuation and stockholder value. It is true that Yahoo is performing well under par and it has so much potential yet to unlock that it’s a shame to see it all go to waste.

Personal I don’t feel Yahoo possesses the expertise to build a powerful ad platform and achieve high content relevance for these ads. Actually, building an ad platform is not hard but content relevance is a whole different ball game which Yahoo cannot achieve without drastic measures in the development sphere. Microsoft cannot achieve this either. In fact if anyone can build a start up that can achieve even 3/4 of Google’s ad relevance and click through rates, they would get bought for billions.

Take your 250MM+ users on Yahoo Mail (or some other web property) and show them Google ads with Yahoo branding. That will generate some healthy revenues. In the mean time work on your own solution in tandem, working toward the goal using Google ads as a benchmark. If you can get 3/4 of the way there (which you probably won’t because content relevance is hard) you can pull the plug on Google.

This boosts Yahoo’s bottom line (keeping shareholders happy) and sets a target for Yahoo to achieve (keeping developers busy).

Muizz | May 6th, 2008 at 8:03 am

First of all, I am one of those who uses the MS O/S but is uncomfortable with MS’ attitude towards domination. I wonder what Yahoo! mail would become under MS’ control.

Having said this Jerry, there is a popular saying in this part of the world which goes thus, “There is no smoke without fire”. Yahoo! is obviously doing something(s) wrong which need(s) remedy. Please check your offerings and improve where necessary.

Finally, I use Yahoo!’s paid hosting service and free email service and can score as follows: 70%-Hosting, 60%-Email (there’s too much SPAM nowadays)

Vida | May 6th, 2008 at 11:03 am

Someone once said watching Microsoft taking over Yahoo is like watching two ugly people kiss! I am glad this is not going to happen.

Here’s Yahoo’s chance to beautify itself, by not attaching itself to MS and by simplifying its services so that end-users benefit. i.e; focusing on Local Markets and helping people prosper and make money. In other words paying attention to today’s economic climate and going about making a difference relentlessly.

I think Yahoo employees should be celebrating right now, because they have a chance to re-invent instead of getting into a sad marriage.

You can do it!

matt zaccara | May 6th, 2008 at 12:25 pm

Yahoo should focus its efforts on creating the world’s first portal focused on giving the user what they want on the internet, not advertisers.
Yahoo is very good at linking advertising to media and that is profitable, but do you have to put big flashing ads in my email?
Yahoo has so much already, all you need is to add a few more pieces and you could turn your site into the first consumer relationship management system to allow consumers to feedback to producers providing them with real ways to improve their products and services.
Yahoo should position itself as the gatekeeper between online consumers and producers.
Yahoo has tools to help consumers already with its review features but it does not promote them properly.
I have the whole thing thought out about how to go about this.
If you think its worthwhile please let me know.
Best of luck in the future.

matt zaccara | May 6th, 2008 at 1:05 pm

You should also focus on creating value for your login, all you need to do is add the social networking piece and a rating tool and you will give users a single place to log in for all your needs.
One log in for: Blog, Social Network, Shopping, Search, Community News, Yellow Pages, Maps, Classified Ads, email.
You should really build a rating tool for your tool-bar and let your users build your directory / engine for you. Tying money to search is just wrong. Its like finding an ad in the card catalog in the library.
Keep on rockin Yahoo.

Chief Financial Officer | May 6th, 2008 at 4:07 pm

Good luck getting back sales from Google

Sales ($ million)
GOOG YHOO
2007 16,593.99 6,969.27
2006 10,604.92 6,425.68
2005 6,138.56 5,257.67
2004 3,189.22 3,574.52

Peter Lewis | May 6th, 2008 at 5:17 pm

I have read a lot of the entries… true, all the unhappy shareholders are…er… unhappy. Many people praise Yahoo! for remaining independent… and not putting the shareholder’s first… but I think, since the shareholder’s do own the company, to keep them in last place for satisfaction is not a wise choice, especially since they can vote. If, however, Mr Yang wants to buy back all the shares, and make his own choices, that is fair.

Conscience | May 6th, 2008 at 5:52 pm

Yahoo USED to be a major player. I see Google being the next Yahoo, but not yet. They’ll eat your lunch first.

You have the history. You have the skills. Albeit not at the top level.

And you’ve shafted shareholders royally up the poop-shoot from the best deal they’ll ever get. It’s all downhill from here.

Either do something useful, or take the next bid you get. Cause you’ve got nothing to make Y! a must-have item.

People seem not to mind the “evilness” of Google because, let’s face it, it’s search miles better than what you offer.

I used to be Yahoo. Now I’m Google. So long as the service is there, nobody really cares who owns stuff.

You probably did the world a favour not accepting Ballmer’s offer - but if i owned shares i’d be sueing your ass.

And I’d win.

Make it an essential service, or cash in your shares and go enjoy retirement.

Oh wait… you can’t afford it now the shares have bombed…

Apart from that, best of luck, you’re my fave out of the three stooges (Y!, MS and Google). Yet somehow, you’re in last place.

Dan | May 6th, 2008 at 7:15 pm

Yahoo has lost its way over the last few years. You claim that you have a plan to fix it. We have waited for the plan and vision and have received little. You claimed a blow out quarter yet the results were not that good.
You turned away Microsoft. Here was an opportunity to push for independence yet capture a better messenger and mail platform (Yahoo’s is very poor and has been for a while). Shareholders would have received a fair price.
But the answer from day one appeared to be - No. we don’t want to do a deal no matter what. Your silence was deafening. You made this an anti microsoft campaign from the start. rather than lookiing out for your shareholders you had your own personal interest at heart. As a Yahoo shareholder I am absolutely disgusted.

Good luck with Google - the wolf in sheep’s clothing at your door. i still can’t believe the ignorance and arrogance.

Frank Roth | May 7th, 2008 at 12:11 am

DENIAL!

Yahoo did great work in the beginning but has failed to grow to be able to survive on its own and does not have breath of business like Microsoft has.

It looks like Mr. Yang’s motivation is personal and not delivering on his duties toward the shareholders or the future of the Yahoo employees.

I am sure the shareholders and employees keep in mind that one of the few who is going to walk out a billionaire will be Mr. Yang. Whatever happens. He is not taking any risk. If you work at Yahoo or own bits of Yahoo, he has decided for you to take a big risk.

Joris Willems | May 7th, 2008 at 2:19 am

Damn, it’s full of astroturfers here. Microsoft has send there army to floot blogs.

David | May 7th, 2008 at 7:47 am

Jerry,

I had already moved over to using Google as my home page, not because it was better, but because of the pending (perhaps) deal with MS. And MS fouls up everything they buy. I’ve moved back to using Yahoo. But now I read of possible deals with News Corp. This would be worse than Microsoft, because everything News Corp. does has an underlying political agenda, and its an agenda I don’t wish to support. And everyone one of my friends feels the same way.

I’ll stick for a while, but I’m hoping I don’t have to move off again…

OfNoConsequence | May 7th, 2008 at 10:24 am

Personally I’m glad that the acquisition didn’t happen, not because I’m a YHOO shareholder but because I’m an MSFT shareholder.

I think it was a mistake for the offer to be made in the first place, all it did was waste time and money, both Yahoo and Microsoft money, which, when you look at it in the long run, is a loss for shareholders because of the foolishness on both your parts.

Yahoo needs to wake up and smell the coffee. You’re not a “young” company anymore, no matter what you want to think. Stop thinking with your bank accounts and “shareholder” value and start thinking of “user” value. Eyeballs on your site, using your features is what you want. If you create real “user” value, then you get the eyeballs of loyal users and shareholder value magically appears.

Same to Microsoft. Microsoft needs to stop chasing Google and start thinking outside the box. Focus your money and time on fixing your own internal problems. Customers don’t want Apple glitziness from Microsoft products, they want stability and reliability. Yes, I know, Apple works in a closed environemt, they create their own hardware compilations and only guarantee their software on their approved hardware. Microsoft has to accept third party hardware and drivers, which reduces stability and reliability for the user. So come up with a solution, you’re MICROSOFT, and if you can add value to the user in the form of stability and reliability by locking out unreliable drivers, then maybe that’s what you should do! Force third party hardware manufacturers to start creating reliable drivers instead of slapping together spaghetti code.

Rewrite core pieces of your operating system to get rid of the third party “workarounds” for compatibility purposes. Lock the OS down and make it rock solid. The third party ISVs and IHVs will have no choice but to step up to the bar and start doing things right from the start.

Victor | May 7th, 2008 at 10:42 am

As someone who once used Yahoo! exclusively for all of my small-business, communication, and on-line shopping needs I can honestly say that I’m surprise Microsoft was as generous as they were with you guys. You have repeatedly dropped the ball on key issues and are now suffering for your greed. In the end I wouldn’t be surprised if Yahoo! tanked completely, your stock valued at $15 per share.

Yahoo! continues to eliminate services, subject its users to capricious policy changes, and all while insuring us that this is for “better customer service.” You can’t call a dog turd a rose and expect people to bury their face in it and appreciate the smell.

Yahoo! ain’t what it once was. Congratulations on successfully looking the gift horse in the mouth.

Al | May 7th, 2008 at 4:12 pm

I started using Yahoo from day 2 and have seen it grow to what it is. Whiners forget that Yahoo started as a DIRECTORY and not a keyword-based search engine like Google. I never got any of my URLs listed past the Yahoo picky operators but that is OK.

Eventually big companies have to go public but saying no to Microsoft took guts and the Board will get a lot of flak (and a lawsuit) from greedy speculators who bought shares for a quick buck. The comments about a decay in Yahoo just because interruptions in email service are nothing compared to the billions of man-hours lost around the world dealing with failures of Windows OS and its useless fixes.

Bravo for Yahoo!

pippo | May 7th, 2008 at 4:45 pm

hello jerry,
i offer you to buy all my shares at 30$.
it’s a real bargain. 20% below fair value.
will you plase contact me immediately ?
i would be very happy to make you richer.
regards

fool009 | May 7th, 2008 at 5:30 pm

You cannot just sell your company to the first guy because this will make shareholders happier. Yahoo has probably a better product lineup then Microsoft and this is the reason why Microsoft needs more Yahoo. If you are confident with your strategy then focus on it. Don’t waste your time and money with stupid deal that will bring more problem. If you buy stock hoping the company will be taken for higher price then you are the most stupid investor. Invest in a company not in the stock.

Vicki | May 8th, 2008 at 2:09 pm

fool009 - well said

What I find interesting (but not surprising) is that the people calling Yang and Co “greedy” are the ones who are all yelling Foul because they missed an opportunity to sell ut and make money. Who’s greedy?

I’m not a big fan of Wall Street. They tend to prefer quick profits over long term strategy. They always want THIS quarter to be incredible but don’t care abut next year. In fact, the company, products, and services don’t matter at all - as long as we can SELL for more than we paid.

Why did you buy stock if you aren’t interested in the company and its technology? This is too much like those people back in the boom years who started a company planning to be bought out by Netscape, or MicroSoft… or Yahoo!

Start the company because you care about what you’re building. Buy the stock as an investment in the future, not a quick sell gamble.

And don’t call someone greedy or shortsighted when you’re not the one sitting in that meeting room making the hard decisions that affect 14,000 employees and millions of customers.