YAHOO! CASE STUDY

Yahoo! Case study

Yahoo! Case study

Introduction

Yahoo is an American company that was formed out of a hobby by its two creators, Jerry Yang and David Filo. David Filo and Jerry Yang were 2 PhD students of electrical engineering at Stanford University. In 1994, David and Jerry published their renowned work 'Guide to the WWW' for their acquaintances to use. (Fernanda, 2009)

Thousands of people used their website; hence they became aware of the potential of their website and started developing directory for them. They listed them into categories and created subcategories as a lot of confusion existed in the method; thus the founding concept of Yahoo! was born. They give name of “Yahoo” to their directory for which the official acronym is “Yet another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.” Yang and Filo said that they liked the general description of the word, which comes from Jonathan Swift's, Gulliver's Travels: “unsophisticated uncouth and rude”.

Terry Semel headed Yahoo! as CEO from 2001 until 2007. His goal was to build Yahoo! Site into a self-contained world of irresistible offerings that would grab and keep surfers glued to it for hours at a time. Semel made some progress in getting Yahoo grow again from Timothy Koogle's chairmanship. Under his leadership, he changed Yahoo!'s old strategies which catered several advantages and disadvantages. Yahoo had significant project acquisitions, but simultaneously, there were also more significant projects that were not accomplished that became the source of frustration for the whole organization and its shareholders. (Fernanda, 2009)

Yahoo sees their core business units as Yahoo News, Finance and Mail. Yahoo's search product has suffered considerably because of expansion into other areas. It has also severely witnessed falling revenue and decreasing cash flows. Consequently, the shareholders expressed dissatisfaction with Semel's performance leading him to resign. Yahoo was also compared to its greatest and unbeatable competitor, Google - in terms of capital, manpower, income and more. (David, 2010)

Yahoo Inc. is following differentiation strategy (i.e. one for all) by offering excellent services to their customers all over the globe. Corporation is also dedicated to empowering its employees and users through products, services, and programs that encourage individuals in making an optimistic impact on the societies.

For an example, the product, 'Yahoo! for Good' links communities with causes through their services and products and through partnerships with non-profit corporations such as Network for Good, Donors Choose and Global Green. The company is concerned with different charities and has extended several thousand dollars to charities all over the globe.

The company is also aligned and functioning with a wide range of services and provides diversification through services extended to its customers. Currently, it is providing 95 and more web services to its customers in thirty plus languages all over the planet. The organization receives the majority of its revenues from their web based services. (David, 2010)

Yahoo! has built a competitive edge over their competitor Google Corporation. In 2007, 'Yahoo! Search' was reorganized with a new redesigned home page. Further, 'Search Assist' was also added; the interface offers ...