Let's be honest. It's been over for a while. We forecast its impending death all the time. The company may not be "officially" dead, but it's truly as good as gone now that it's been revealed that CEO Scott Thompson "misrepresented" his education on his résumé. His bio and résumé have indicated that he received a computer science degree from Stonehill College when, in fact, he didn't. Haha! This "error" was revealed by board member Daniel Loeb, who -- as Kim Davis recently wrote -- has appeared to be planning Thompson's "bloodless assassination."
While Yahoo tried to cast this off as an "inadvertent mistake," that excuse doesn't really fly since Thompson was also fibbing about his education on his résumé when he was CTO of PayPal.
Scott Thompson's degree at Stonehill College was in bachelor science in accounting. There was an inadvertent error that stated Mr. Thompson also holds a degree in computer science. This, in no way, alters that fact that Mr. Thompson is a highly qualified executive with a successful track record leading large consumer technology companies. Under Mr. Thompson's leadership, Yahoo! is moving forward to grow the company and drive shareholder value.
Well, Yahoo has one thing correct here: Scott Thompson's degree is BS.
Beyond that, this situation is mortifying, and the above statement by Yahoo makes it worse. Its approach to handling this has only armed onlookers (read: everyone) with a heavier load of stones to throw.
And because of that, it's time we release a statement of our own: Yahoo's obituary. Because as far as we're concerned, this company's life is officially over. Likely Yahoo will fire Thompson and try to carry on for a bit, but there's no life left there, and it's only a matter of time before it's all over. So we say why wait for the inevitable? Let us mourn now.
Yahoo, 1994 to 2012: Yahoo was founded in 1994 by David Filo and Jerry Yang who were Stanford PhD students (we think).
Its two most recent executives prior to its death were Carol Bartz, whose leadership was marked by several droppings of the F-bomb, and Scott Thompson, who BS-ed his way to the top (and then straight to the bottom).
Before doing everything possible to ensure failure, Yahoo enjoyed some success as a search portal with other services, like email and stuff.
Toward the end of its life, Yahoo witnessed a rapid fall from grace, turning down a $45 billion-dollar offer to be revived by Microsoft. Just prior to its passing, Yahoo began to show signs of senility, waking up some days thinking it was a startup. (Sigh.)
Yahoo, now so totally dead, is survived by Google and Facebook, and even AOL, which is especially pathetic.
Please feel free to weigh in on the message boards with your memories and sentiments for the dearly and depressingly departed-to-be.
True KMT568 but it got delayed because of the ong processes followed by yahoo. Still if you go to their home page you will find so many unwanted stuff.
Actually, I am heartened by this. It simply didn't sit well that the woman who was in charge of hiring Thompson was taking a fall while he had clearly known about it all along, a Kim points out in his message and video below.
I was disturbed that Thompson continued to slough off the allegations -- his resistance was more repugnant than the original issue to me.
"Thompson's inaccurate resume might have been more forgivable at a company that was posting big returns for its shareholders, said James Post, a management professor at Boston University. But it's likely that Third Point was looking for an excuse to get rid of Thompson, Post said."
So one can only wonder the likely reasons why Third Point want to see Thompson depart. Now that they have got their onw CEO in place,let's see how they go about turning around the fortunes of Yahoo.
On a funny note "what does it say about a search engine company that can't search it's own CEO's resume before it gives him a 7-figure job and trashes the entire company's image?"
It's a head-scratcher. His explanations of what happened are becoming ever more strange and/or implausible. He didn't want to correct that interviewer on the air... The misstatement appeared in his resume because of a misunderstanding with a headhunting firm... He didn't submit a resume when he applied for the Yahoo job...
What a tangled web. The fall-out from this is making him seem untrustworthy, and I'd currently bet heavily on him being out by middle of next week.
Beware your bold prediction may come true. I wrote an editorial on DT about how if HP let the Palm unit be Palm it was doomed. That was exactly one day before HP announced it was killing webOS sales.
Sometimes these kind of observations prove all to accurate and immediate. If Yahoo indeed dies I will give you mad bragging rights!
The two strengths that yahoo has managed to maintain are their email and their messaging. I don't happen to like either one very much compared to google or even microsoft equivalents. But yahoo is still competitive in that area.
The other thing about Yahoo! is that somehow it just doesn't quite go away. Despite one poor decision after another, despite big losses in their share of the market, they just don't give up. And somehow they've enticed corporate partners like at&t...
You are right, @Nicole, that the yahoo board of directors no longer wants Thompson in charge. But he got pretty far with that tried and true tactic that is even more often exhibited in government: The Big Lie.
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