Yahoo’s Biggest Mistakes

What’s left to be said? Forbes analyzed the Yahoo situation and found five big errors that the portal made over the past ten years:

1) Wasted time and money on aborted projects. “They wasted a lot of money on projects that have been scrapped,” one engineer said of the company’s management. Google does this all the time, but it’s part and parcel of the company’s structure–employees spend 20 percent of their time working on their own pet projects, whereas Yahoo introduced larger, more sweeping initiatives many times only to abandon them shortly thereafter.

2) Passed up a chance to buy Google. “Yahoo! had the chance to buy Google in 2002. Then-Chief Executive Terry Semel reportedly balked at the $5 billion price after months of negotiation.” Ooh, that one must hurt. For the rest, check out the full article.

(Image credit: Reuters)

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.