Kudos to Jerry Yang

There is a lot of criticism of Jerry Yang around but I say Kudos to Jerry for standing up to the bully.

Whether it was in his motivation or not, this outcome is best for Yahoo employees and for Silicon Valley as a whole. I am rather appalled that he is being criticized for declining a quick profit for shareholders yet he was smart enough to recognize there was a price that they could not refuse. That price was $37 and it was a price that Steve Ballmer was unwilling to pay. So it goes ...

Clearly Yahoo! has some challenges ahead, but then so do Microsoft.

As to a deal with Google. I think it just makes eminently good sense for Yahoo! to farm off their operations of search onto Google. They will continue to get the revenue, lower their costs and sharpen their focus.

It makes perfect sense for them to play to their strengths and there is a more valuable prize to be won than Search. I agree with what BJ Fogg said in his Stanford class last week. The social graph is a much more valuable prize than search and Yahoo! have a good stab at that, while Google has little chance at it.

I wish Yahoo, a Sunnyvale company, the best of luck and I firmly believe their CEO did the right thing.