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The Damaging Focus on Share Price

The recent news that Yahoo and FMI are in talks about MySpace makes me shudder, as does Jerry Yang’s acknowledgement of the “difficult task he faces to arrest the decline in the internet portal’s shares.”

From where I’m sitting, Yahoo’s going about their revitalization backwards already. Google and Apple drive their corporate decision making process with their overall strategies, worrying little about short-term share price effects; Yahoo drives its overall strategy and decision-making with knee jerk reactions to those share prices. Which approach do you think is more likely to lead to long-term success?

That’s why I feel any deal with FMI at this stage would be ill-conceived; its a share-manipulation stunt to give the board something to preen about, not a carefully considered move that fits into a long-term strategy (Apple’s style), or a wild bout of paradigm-shifting creativity (Google’s style).

apple, FMI, google, myspace yahoo

3 Responses to “The Damaging Focus on Share Price”

Perry | June 22nd, 2007 at 10:09 am

You hit the nail on the head, I also cringed when I read Jerry Yang’s Yodel post:

“This company has massive potential, drive, determination and skills, and we won’t be satisfied until the external perception of Yahoo! accurately reflects that reality”.

…a sad yardstick.
Rod | June 24th, 2007 at 9:45 pm

Hey - thanks Perry. It is remarkable that Yang can appear so far off the mark so quickly. Jerry - how about just focusing on making your company excellent instead of worrying about what everyone thinks of you?

Everything coming out of Yahoo just says “Death By Shareholder.”
Death by Shareholder « TechFold | June 24th, 2007 at 10:04 pm

[…] just wanted to write a quick post to introduce a concept: “Death By Shareholder.” Yahoo is the current epitome of this, though I worry that Google and/or Apple may get there eventually […]