Yahoo business undersiege: Was the Company at Risk?

Yahoo, the iconic company of the web has reportedly loses $303 Million in its Q4. Yahoo’s Q4 loss is its first loss since 2002. The Company is in chaos. But despite of those loses Yahoo! stock were up at $11.69 a share about 3% up, that’s good news for investors but not enough Yahoo! still in great trouble the Company it needs of a bold leadership. The online giant is struggling; its core US business is us under siege. Yahoo has already announced thousands of layoffs and shutdown number of services. I’ll been following Yahoo! since the Microsoft search deal broke out so far Yahoo! is not looking good. The recent confirmation of its new CEO Carol Bartz won’t help Yahoo. A lot of tech savvy people in the Silicon Valley are not impressed about Yahoo new CEO. What exactly Yahoo! should? Well Yahoo! must undertake survival tactics and drastic measures. The Company needs a major makeover Yahoo’s mistakes was in the operational side and management, Yahoo! failed to reduce the operational costs and also to increase efficiency. But the biggest threat to Yahoo’s online business is the current economic crisis it could hurt Yahoo. The current economic crisis has sent ad rate plummeting, advertisers are cutting back on ads spending elsewhere. If Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz wants to remake the Company and conquer the web then Bartz must focus on US market. The US is the center for online advertising spending and in order to survive and conquer the web (if the God forbid) the Company needs to take or focus mostly to the US market not just abroad. Bartz got a lot works here at Yahoo!, we seen a lot of “crack” at Yahoo’s foundation. We still don’t know what direction Carol Bartz will take Yahoo. My guess is Bartz would dress up Yahoo! for sell or maybe seek an elephant in the room; I’m talking about perhaps some Microsoft search deal. Yahoo! got lot of potentials despite Yahoo’s tragedy it still managed to roll out some “creative works”, the Company recently launched Open Strategy Initiative, and the works is great it adds social networking components to Yahoo! services and it’s allows third party application integrations. But this is not enough; Yahoo! is spending time and resources into web products that won’t integrate to its core business. The search is Yahoo! core business, Yahoo! is losing the search market share, and Microsoft is growing stronger. Yahoo! needs to do something if it’s to thrive in the online business it needs to integrate it web products to its core business just like Google did. Is Carol Bartz got plans for Yahoo?

China beat US in the internet usage.

For years the Chinese government has keeping a close eye on its people’s internet usage. The Chinese government has already rolled out filtering systems used to block access to forbidden sites. The government has been watching every websites, blogs and search engines their people visit. The Great Wall of China represents Chinese government huge efforts to keep the internet under its boots. It’s Beijing’s attempts to silence dissent and block references to politically sensitive topics like human rights and democracy. But despite of those heavy handed censorships on internet usage it won’t stop internet from growing fast thought out the country. The China Internet Network Information Center claims the nation’s online population has grown 41.9% in 2008, a whopping 298 million users BBC reports. It’s already surpassed the US as the world’s largest online population. Although internet penetration is still low about 22.65. Most of the Chinese internet usage growth is happening in the countryside, according to TechCrunch, the countryside is growing faster than in the cities it’s pretty high about 60.8% compared to 35.6% in the cities. The Chinese bloggers population has also increased from 16 million to 162 million and with the advent of high speed internet connection we could expect more on Chinese online population. The recent development in the mobile industry would also give China a commanding lead in internet usage, Chinese could now browse the web through their mobile phone as the mobile phone starts to make a sleeper hit and presence in China we could expect terrible growth here. China government has already approved the deployment of 3G network for mobile phones, licenses for 3G enabled mobile phones have finally been issued to Chinese Telecom companies.

Microsoft Windows 7 first move.

Microsoft next big technological terror would soon come to your PC. Windows 7 the OS from Redmond based Microsoft Corp. The Software Company has already announced and released its first public beta version of its Windows 7 Operating System and so far the demand is great. The Company’s servers have been crippled. Microsoft online infrastructure can’t able to handle the huge demands for Windows 7 it crashed; the Company has underestimated the traffic. Although The Windows 7 is in public beta version but the demand is huge it already storm the web during its first released. Windows 7 is a monster. I’m sure this OS will create tons of buzz in the blogosphere, still I can’t give you the exact date of the official release of Windows 7. It’s still in beta stage.