$YHOO has been mismanaged from the top down since Tim Koogle‘s bar mitzvah.
Despite this, it has somehow retained a huge slice of internet traffic and owns what continue to be some of the best web properties in the world.
With Loeb gaining considerable leverage, the potential exists to unlock latent value over time as difficult decisions are made smartly, as the board finally reorganizes and as this reorg trickles down.
This morning, Blodget does the best job I have seen of detailing the current situation and the future potential. He writes:
For years, many people at Yahoo, along with the Yahoo board, have gazed with envy at the success of more technology-oriented companies like Google. Yahoo’s own vision, meanwhile, has drifted all over the map. Terry Semel’s regime was an old-media regime, and it took the company too far toward the old Hollywood and TV media model. Jerry Yang’s regime wanted to turn the clock back to the “start page” model of the mid-1990s, without acknowledging that the industry had long since moved on. Carol Bartz’s regime had no vision at all for where to take the company, at least not one that was visible to anyone inside or outside the company. The appointment of the unknown Scott Thompson as CEO, meanwhile, appeared to be an attempt to steer the company back toward technology.
Yahoo’s position in the digital media business, moreover, is an extraordinarily powerful one: It is both content creator and content distributor. And, like all good digital media companies, Yahoo is both a technology and a media company: Its product is a combination of both. Without great technology, you can’t deliver great content, create communities, and build platforms. Without great content, meanwhile, you can’t get anyone to use the great technology you build.
The big opportunity here is that Loeb and company finally put an end to the systemic mismanagement of this lumbering web behemoth and begin to leverage its brand, size and traffic. It will not be an easy task but two steps are now in place.
First, the company admits that it has a problem and second, it has taken steps to rectify.
Read the rest of Henry’s piece here: This is the Best Thing to Happen at Yahoo in Years