Can Susan Decker Turn Yahoo Around?

Can She Turn Yahoo Into, Well, Google? from the New York Times takes a deep look at Yahoo’s new president, Susan Decker, and her capabilities of turning things around for the company. I’ll bulletpoint some of the reasons why people feel she may or may not accomplish big changes for Yahoo: Smart people like Warren […]

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Can She Turn Yahoo Into, Well, Google? from the New York Times takes a deep look at Yahoo’s new president, Susan Decker, and her capabilities of turning things around for the company. I’ll bulletpoint some of the reasons why people feel she may or may not accomplish big changes for Yahoo:

  • Smart people like Warren Buffett, Steven Jobs, Craig Barrett, Hamilton James feel she can.
  • Decker lacks operational experience, leading people to believe she cannot handle that portion of the business. However, some people feel her smarts will overcome the fact that she does not have that type of experience.
  • Decker has proven the ability the lead highly skilled and creative people.
  • She helped Yahoo reset expectations of growth after the dot-com burst.
  • People like her fun and unpretentious personality.
  • She was accredited for the eBay, newspaper and Right Media deals.
  • But she was also blamed for the delay in the Panama release and setting too high expectations in Wall Street.
  • She has been blamed for the failure of the Facebook deal and not securing an ad deal with MySpace.
  • Some people felt they spent too much on Right Media.

About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.

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