BRAND: Yahoo==Alice in Wonderland, a little lost

The web 1.0 leader worries about survival as a stand-alone property. Wall Street cares about growth and Yahoo has lost market share during the web 2.0 resurgence.

The Semel-years led Yahoo toward better financial management, but poor strategic thinking. Rather than investing in the infrastructure of people, platforms, and innovation - the company moved toward content and services - a dead-end that competes with millions of media partners - and a goal where it's impossible dominate the world of opinions. 

Post-Semel, the company has had too many ideas. 360, AMP, Broadcast, Buzz, Del.icio.us, Geocities, Jajah, My Bookmark, MyBlogLog, Shine, Yahoo Auctions, Yahoo Directory, Yahoo Music, Yahoo! Open Strategy, Yahoo Pipes, YPN, Yahoo Video, Yahooligans - too many me-too projects, too little results.  

What's next? 370? Shinola? Twitt-oo?

Web 2.0 is not a tea party - it's a war. Choose your fronts and remember to win.

PS: Microsoft has lost interest in Yahoo. Will Yahoo be distracted by shareholder politics? Will the stock price tank? Will strategic partners question Yahoo's credibility? Difficult times for Yahoo ahead - they need a win.

Who Is Buying Yahoo Shares Today?

By SAUL HANSELL

...Mr. Yang boasted of the company’s first-quarter results, which were slightly ahead of analysts’ expectations, and its recent crop of “innovative products and services that really move the needle and make a difference for our users and customers”:

Acquiring Maven Networks. Launching Buzz, OneSearch 2.0, voice-activated mobile search, video on Flickr, Shine. Previewing AMP! from Yahoo! and SearchMonkey. Addingmore Newspaper Consortium members. Establishing our New R&D labs in India and Israel.

SearchMonkey—a method to open Yahoo’s search engine to outsiders—is interesting. The AMP! Platform and Newspaper Consortium represent anemerging strategy to build out Yahoo’s display advertising business...