Technology, Culture, Commentary on the Internet Revolution

MS-Yahoo Proxy Board: Who the Hell are These Guys?

by Mike Abundo on April 24th, 2008

Yahoo selling out to Microsoft would be like a mammal chaining itself to a dinosaur — or in this case, the Ballmersaur. Now that the Wall Street Journal has revealed the proxy board it plans to put on top of Yahoo, I’m more convinced than ever that a Microsoft acquisition would kill Yahoo. Read through the list and tell me what’s wrong with it:

The nominees include former Nextel Partners Inc. CEO John Chapple, former Grey Global Group Inc. CEO Edward Meyer, Jaynie Studenmund, the former chief operating officer of Overture Services Inc., which was later acquired by Yahoo, and former Adelphia Communications Corp. Chief Financial Officer Vanessa Wittman, according to people familiar with the matter.

Yup, you guessed right: there is not one superstar Web technologist on the list. Jerry Yang has his faults, but at least we’ve actually heard of the guy. I look at this list and think, Who the Hell are these guys? With this proxy board, whatever disappearing technological savvy Yahoo has left at the top will completely vanish — and with it, Ballmer’s hopes of using Yahoo to crush the supertechies at Google.

Ballmer bellows that he wants to get into online advertising and kill Google, but he fails to realize that technology is key to success in online advertising. That’s why Google focuses on technology, not relationships, to succeed in advertising. Until Ballmer understands that, no amount of M&A madness will help him satisfy his grudge against Eric Schmidt.

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POSTED IN: Microsoft, Yahoo