The Yahoo! crystal gaze

I can’t say this about fortunes of the company, but there is hardly a dull day at Yahoo!

Jerry Yang, founder and outgoing CEO said this earlier in a memo to the troops - "All of you know that I have always, and will always bleed purple. I will always do what I think is right for this great company. While this step will be an adjustment for all of us, I know it's the right one."

He exits not only bleeding, but battered into a stunning shade of aubergine after months of public pummeling for passing on a Microsoft buyout and failing to firm up a viable alternative strategy as the stock tanked. The initial burst of enthusiasm that sent the company's market cap up by about $2 billion in early trading reflected a consensus that this was a step that had to be taken before anything else could happen, and a later partial retreat showed those hopes tempered by the reality of the challenges that still face Yang's successor.

So now what? Attention has quickly turned to speculation on a successor, and the perception that Yahoo's problems are systemic bodes ill for any in-house candidates, like President Sue Decker. "The next hire has to be a statement; it can't be from inside the company," said Rick Munarriz, an analyst with the Motley Fool. "You don't need a Yahoo again. The first thing they should do with the new CEO is cut him open and if he bleeds purple they kick him out."

But then there is the big Carl (Icahn) pushing for someone -- anyone -- who will get the deal done so he can cash in and check out.

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I would fire Ballmer for a different reason

So with Gates out of the gate, let’s fire Ballmer?

Bill Gates was a geek when he started out. He went on to build a monster. Now by the end of this month, he is about to call it quits handing over the reins to Steve Ballmer, a salesman at heart. Where is Microsoft headed?

Remember how he won the browser war upstaging Netscape and the way he got Windows Media Player chew up Real Media and other competitors? Courts may have caught up with him eventually, but by then others were smashed to pulp. May be Microsoft is not yet fully out of the woods on those counts; but what is an occasional billion dollar fine when you're making multiple billions in profit every quarter? It’s just another cost of doing business.

Can Ballmer execute it with that clinical precision? We know what happened to Vista under Ballmer. Ballmer is fat and Microsoft is already gasping for breath under his dead weight. He’s now working hard and that is all the more reason why they should worry more as shareholders and we as its customers (if at all).

“Ballmer can't do the job. If I were in charge of Microsoft, I'd fire Ballmer” – says Steven J. Vaughan. I would second that for a different reason though – for even thinking of buying Yahoo for $47 billion. A company that will come a lot cheap a few years down the line with a clueless Jerry Yang and a hawkish Carl Icahn - who can't spell WEB even if you spot a W and an E for him - at the top.

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