Yahoo’s Pay-Per-Click Battlefront
by Kevin Gold
I was listening to a great podcast from Stanford University’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leadership Series. Sue Decker, the President of Yahoo gave an excellent talk about Yahoo! and their future. It is definitely worth listening to if you want to understand where Yahoo is heading. Although based on the recent exodus of many Yahoo! managers, it makes me wonder how much confidence Yahoo! employees are placing in Ms. Decker’s vision.
Nevertheless, one small point presented on the podcast had to do with Yahoo’s objective to quickly integrate new acquisitions into their business. Ms. Decker stated how one of Yahoo’s biggest failures in the past was the ridiculously slow integration of Overture into Yahoo’s network. Boy - truer words were never spoken! I recall writing about how Yahoo completely screwed up their Overture acquisition and how it was terrible that Google was able to so easily leap-frog Yahoo Search Marketing in PPC especially since Overture created the market! Basically Yahoo! had the foresight to acquire Overture at the right time and then got stupid and let it sit on the sidelines while Google changed the model. What a shame.
