Comments on: Web 2 Conversations: Jerry Yang

By: paul

paul — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:24:10 +0000

Yes, to what Ian Kennedy says!

We have watched as Yahoo has made deals with major newspapers, but how about aggregating our content and sharing ad revenue? Can't Yahoo find a way to help bloggers, photographers and videographers who in turn will help Yahoo?

By: Narendra

Narendra — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:36:55 +0000

Jerry, you are coming up on 15 years of living and breathing Yahoo and the Web. Give us two defining moments, big or small, that capture: first, your greatest sense of pride or satisfaction; and second, your worst fear or anxiety.

By: Omar Khan

Omar Khan — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:10:43 +0000

How could Yahoo! go about turning Flickr into the image search engine and image database on the web?

By: Ian Kennedy

Ian Kennedy — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:43:21 +0000

Advertisers tend to evaluate the value of a site using a metrics such as pageviews and unique users which is increasingly out of sync with the modern web of APIs and RSS feeds. Does Yahoo feel the need to change this measuring stick and, if so, what is being done externally in the market and internally at Yahoo to change the way Yahoo is valued?

By: Larry Chiang

Larry Chiang — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:52:08 +0000

Jerry, what are a couple of things that you know that they would never ever have taught in business school?

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:33:43 +0000

What will you do to restore investor confidence in management?

By: Sue Errington

Sue Errington — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:20:15 +0000

What a bunch of softball questions.

Ask him:

What its going to cost to save Yahoo in terms of jobs and cutbacks. Ellison cut back a billion dollars in Oracle expenses in one year.

What guided him in deciding which executives to fire last summer.

Is it disturbing to run a company when so many special interest groups are attacking a business with their socially motivated positions.

Why should a company's role be in relation to moral, political or religious issues that have nothing to do with the company's business?

Does he ever resent the ideas of the left or the right, and where do special interest groups and organizers need to draw the line in their public conduct related to businesses?

Do engineering employees at Yahoo have a say in the direction of the company.

By comparison to Asia, is the United States on the right or wrong track as a democracy and a ethical place to do business.

When do you know what's right and wrong?

By: Turkeybellyboy

Turkeybellyboy — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:03:42 +0000

Who is your successor, and what date are you leaving?

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:01:32 +0000

I would ask him why given that Yahoo has failed on traditional search they haven't put more resources into creating search engines for flights (akin to kayak), financial search engines akin to moneysupermarket or gocompare.com in the UK. If he mentioned kelkoo, you might as well give up, it'd be a joke. I would also ask why more resources weren't put into yahoo finance and whether he regrets keeping display advertising seperate from the core advertising after they bought Overture.

I take a different view on the google adwords deal, as an advertiser it takes me longer to administer my yahoo account for 5% of the traffic compared to google, in terms of ROI i am always better optimising my google account rather than faffing with small changes in ROI on meaningless amounts of traffic.

By: Rob

Rob — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:08:00 +0000

I would ask him whether he deems Federated Media a competitor… and whether those people with a potential vested interest in either a MSFT acquisition of YHOO (Michael Arrington?)… or even yourself with FM ever comment fairly on the company.