So long, good bye, see you later, that’s basically how the Silicon Valley does it, and the ex-CEO of Yahoo, Terry Semel, is not exempt. Though truthfully that he has managed to keep his job while his competitor, the big G, dominated his stock price by 21x is amazing. I’m just saying that in any other industry he would’ve been fired at least 5 years ago. Only in this Web 2.0 age do myspace widgets get $10M of funding, Lifelocked bandits go unnoticed, and an incompetent CEO run rampant. To best illustrate our example, lets talk about something absoutely basic, running a fast food chain.

Picture this if you will, you are the store manager of a McDonald’s and have owned 54th street for years. Then up and comer, In n Out, sets up shop right next to you. Instead of stomping on your competition while they are weak, you decide to ignore this upstart….Until that upstart has 500 storefronts in your city and you can’t sell a chicken mcnugget to save your life. That’s what happend to Yahoo, and in retrospect that’s why Terry Semel should’ve gotten the boot at the get go. Yahoo was, in fact still is, primed to be an internet force in this new age, and that’s what the sad part is. Yahoo is one part golden child one part failed potential.

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