Yahoo No longer a Leader

From Yahoo's glory days in the early 90's to its painfully slow comeback, it's a little sad to see an innovative company fall so far behind. The NY Times article, Once a Leader, Yahoo Now struggles to Find its Way, makes predictions on why this happened to Yahoo. With money, publicity and innovation on its side, sometimes its the mere shift of focus on the wrong variable that can bring a company to the brink of collapse (not that I'm suggesting Yahoo is going to collapse, but we've seen many leaders in the dot com boom fail i.e Friendster). The writer suggests that Yahoo, like AOL directed its vision on digital content while Google and FaceBook invested their dollars on building mobile and social networking services that attract users AND advertisers. Although Yahoo still has a huge audience, second only to Google, advertisers are after 'more profitable prey' which includes social networks, video sites and smartphones.This is a clear example of how innovation isn't permanent--companies must continue to progress in this evolving industry (being on top one day doesn't mean you won't be on the bottom the next).

I often wonder how these companies, with so much financing and resources to support them, could make such a fundamental mistake --> not listening to its customers. Sure, the CEO of Yahoo was just fired for her management decisions , but I think the real change needs to be in the company's strategy and vision- they need to refocus their attention in the direction their customers are taking them in. And that is the only way they'll survive.