Dear Diary: Jerry of 100 Days
It’s hard to believe we’re already at Day 37 of the 100-day marathon that Yahoo co-founder and new CEO Jerry Yang said he would undertake to create a long-term strategic plan and figure out the shape of the company going forward.
“There will be no sacred cows and we need to move quickly,” said Yang (pictured here) during a July 17 second-quarter earnings conference call with analysts, where he announced his vision quest along with the dismal results.
Well? So? Any clues as to what bovines are headed to the chopping block and how that plan is coming together?
Not that we can tell from any dramatic moves on Yahoo’s or Yang’s part yet. No game-changing acquisitions. No being acquired. No abandoning of its search-ad business. No shifting of Yahoo’s boiling-the-ocean approach to defining its business (also known as the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none strategy). No closing of its divisions. Not even any cloddishly accomplished management shifts.
It’s quiet. Too quiet over there in Sunnyvale.
Thus, in our state of anticipation combined with mild boredom, perhaps it is time to imagine what Yang’s first daily diary entry might have looked like.
July 18, 2007: DAY 1
I guess my regular golf round is out of the question now.
Sure, Terry Semel’s probably off with his pal Tom Cruise on some luxury vacation, while I am now tethered here with Sue Decker as first mate for who knows how long. And I don’t even have Lloyd Braun to kick around anymore.
Just the other day at the annual meeting, I was saying how I did not have an interest in the CTO job even. Now I’m here as the symbol of change and hope for the company I started with Dave Filo, which was sort of my old job, but now with all the operational headaches on top.
And no free ride for me, like that Mark Zuckerberg over at Facebook, with the press all fawning over a guy whose last job was, um, going to college.
And why do I get all the abuse when those solar-power-generating-gourmet-organic-food-serving-hybrid-car-driving- search-ad-dominating Bobbsey twins over at that “magical” Googleplex (it’s just a boring Silicon Valley office complex with lot of colorful exercise balls strewn around, people, not a little slice of geek heaven) get treated like a kinder, gentler version of Bill Gates squared?
I should just throttle Brad Garlinghouse or, at least, force-feed him some of that peanut butter he was so obsessed with in that memo that kicked off this whole mess. Spread too thin, are we?
Here’s my new response every time I see him strolling around with that I-told-you-all-so grin: You got peanut butter on my company! You got company in my peanut butter!
