A couple of decades ago when the Internet was young I would go to Yahoo daily and check out the list of new websites publishing that day. Every new website was listed on Yahoo (I can’t remember where) and as the number grew they were indexed by category. It was a raw way of seeing what was new on the web. Very wild west.
Then Yahoo became more of a portal, with a home page, news and other information utilities, e.g,. weather, stocks, etc. Where Yahoo and Google diverged was in content. Google kept to search and developed a wonderful advertising model while Yahoo meandered into news, entertainment, video and the like. Yahoo, in other words, tried to be an online newspaper, radio station, TV network and perhaps the world first amalgam of those things. Como se expensive? Advertising revenue grew and the company liked being in the content business but the business model was muddy. Not extensible. And expensive. What did Google do? Cleaner search and smarter ads.
Any hedge find worth its salt will tell you to focus. They look at trends and business fundies then pare, pare pare. Starboard Value, pushing for dissolution of the Yahoo board, is no different. Starboard is the “stick” that will probably help Yahoo live on. I would counsel them, however, to bring in a brand strategist who can provide some depth to the decision they make. Yahoo is a powerful brand. It owns much space in the minds of consumers. Don’t toss out that value, use it.
Peace.
