Yahoo!'s Terry Semel steps back, Susan and Jerry Step up

Today I am at the SES Latino Conference in Miami, FL (more on that later). During some of the sessions, the various representatives from Yahoo! spoke about the ‘innovation’ of Panama. I can overlook the fact that this is a conference on Latino marketing and the Yahoo contribution’s were predominantly about Yahoo Panama (at least it’s name is that of a Central American country), but I just heard similar ‘pitches’ at the SMX conference in Seattle a couple of weeks ago (am I allowed to mention SES and SMX in the same breath?!?)  .  Normally I don’t mind a company pitching its products. But, Yahoo!’s insistence on using adjectives like ‘innovative’ to describe Panama while Google is sitting on the stage with them is embarrassing.

So, along with all the financials and shareholder discontent that have come out lately, it is no surprise that Terry is stepping back and allowing Susan Decker and Jerry Yang to step up as President and CEO respectively. Press release.

Since the release of Panama I have held my words about Yahoo!’s aggrandizement of a product that merely mimics what has been in market for years. When Avenue A issued several verdicts, I simply cautioned that it was too soon to really tell what the impact will be, and it will be primarily up top the SEMs to decide. I then heard Terry Semel talk about the great improvements of Panama during the shareholder calls and I was further questioning their perspective. It is not that Panama is bad. It isn’t. It is a great improvement over the old Yahoo! / Overture system. However, it is now and only just now, catching up to the market.

I am not sure how a company can become a leader in the space when it believes it is ‘innovative’ with a product that is comparable to technology that has been in place for years. If Yahoo! wants to impress shareholders, then it must either develop something that advertisers OR users think is above Google’s offerings, or just plug away at search to keep up and find an area where it truly has a competitive advantage.

If I were even more arrogant than I am, I’d pretend to know what the competitive advantage is. Yahoo! has great properties, terrific traffic and really smart people. I hope the new leadership finds the magic that has eluded Terry, and the rest of us.