Yahoo!, Yahoo!, what did you do?
While I busy myself composing a nursery rhyme about Yahoo!'s deadly warning of an hour ago, I'm looking at the red numbers on my monitor. (What rhymes with "Project Panama"? Ooh, I can just rhyme with "unforeseen delay.") Yep, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is not looking good, down $3.57, or 12.3%, and flirting with its 52-week low of $24.91. Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) down 4%, or $16.54, to $398.15 (break on through to the other, other side!). eBay investors are slamming their portfolios, too, selling off eBay to the tune of a drop of 82 cents, or 3%, to $26.02.
Yahoo!'s position as bellwether certainly has a storied history; I remember oh-so-well those heady days in early 1999 when I sat in Jeremy Siegel's finance class at Wharton and watched Yahoo! soar to ever-dizzier-heights, rising and falling $100, $200 a share in a single day. It was crazy, and the company always lead the market. That was long before the advent of a public Google; and it's interesting to see how Google and Yahoo! are interacting now that the two of them share a sector on the NASDAQ.
Yahoo! is to blame, that's for sure. It's the company's failure to grab revenue from the ever-luscious but hard-to-handle local classifieds. It's the terrifically unreliable growth. More than anything, it's the "confusion and delay" caused by the unknown future of Project Panama.
It's all Yahoo!'s fault.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-19-2006 @ 1:44PM
Gary E. Sattler said...
Well, I've been waiting for this day.
It took a while but the BIG investors have FINALLY realized that this internet game is just too wide open for their taste. Obscure borders on a medium so powerful can justifiably and instantly lead to ruin. First Amendment issues, privacy issues, pirating, mail fraud, flim flam scam artists, copyright infringement, the list goes on.
The only reason I'm still so high on Google is because they had the foresight to tie their operations to solid existing "hardware". It's hard to get in a First Amendment jam when you're just presenting ad copy and direct links to business people.
What has to happen now, if you don't want to watch a ten year retrograde of this whole thing, is for SOMEONE to step into the gap and start directing the establishment of the ground rules. Congress, the FCC, the Supreme Court, the financiers and many others need to NOW outline the frame work that's going to hold this internet together. If not, it's going to be tested in the lower courts...for years.
Anybody know someone who's up to the job?
Drop me a note...
Gary E. Sattler
9-19-2006 @ 3:46PM
kevin leo said...
George, you want a FEDERAL INTERNET GOVERNANCE CASE out of poor execution by YHOO? This is RICH non-sequitor.
9-19-2006 @ 5:36PM
Ann Lambert said...
G.S You do much better than this.
I AM CARGIN BY YOUR MEANINGLESS COMENT.
Did you missed your a.a meeting again?
9-19-2006 @ 6:06PM
Ann Lambert said...
G.S, get a hold on your excitement, I have followed you since mid July, I know you have done much better.
Now you are really beginning to believe you can be Norma Rae.
I intentionally “chagrin” to get you to wake up.