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Story: Microsoft wants Yahoo for its users, say analysts
What about Yahoo's people?
This analyst comment seem to have missed two big issues - the clash in employment cultures and scale of departures from Yahoo! that will be prompted by this takeover.
Over the past 18 months Yahoo! has experienced an exodus of senior staff - most high profile was the departure of their CEO, Terry Semel, but other departures in 2007 included their chief sales officer, CTO, SVP of their recruitment arm and plenty of middle manager roles. Yahoo appeared to have stagnated, losing some of the energy that so set it apart from the rest of the tech sector when first established. Coming to terms with playing second fiddle in the search market was proving difficult - it is always harder to adapt to being second in a market you once led, rather than to always be the smaller player (e.g. T-Mobile's position in the mobile sector...)
Even if these departures can be dismissed as natural turnover or a reaction to the new CEO - Microsoft is a very different culture from Yahoo and if this takeover prompts consolidation of the operations to benefit from economies of scale - I fear a further exodus could be on the cards. And Yahoo can ill afford to lose any further talent in a market where innovation remains a key factor to success.
Good luck to Microsoft - it would be good to see a proper challenge to Google if only to keep the market dynamic, but I fear they have paid far too much for a company that was already in decline...
James B
R&D, London
Member since: January 2004
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