Yahoo is called "the purple Titanic" as staffers talk of what went wrong
Once it seemed it could do no wrong. Now the online giant seems "lost in the fog", says one California paper, and talk is growing of a takeover.
Now one former ad executive says people are calling it "the purple Titanic".
The phrase pops up in article in the San Jose Mercury News. The former executive who left a few months ago says, "I get recruiters calling me saying, 'Do you know anyone at Yahoo you'd like to save?''.
With the sacking last week of CEO Carol Bartz -- who called her board "doofuses'' after they fired her -- some former and current staffers describe the company as adrift.
With revenues falling and good ideas "dying on the vine" the content-driven trailblazer - now seems "lost in the fog" said the Mercury News.
Kenny Liao,28, who left Yahoo this month after four years, said, "Compared with Google, whose business units act like startups, we're an older tech company and a lot of people who've been here a long time are set in their ways.
"New ideas require too much buy-in from everyone. If managers see something new coming up that might hurt their area, they tend to get territorial and play it safe."
Bartz had been criticised for her brash style , but Liao says the fault lies with "the whole Yahoo culture, not just Carol. It's been hard to get things done."
Founded in 1994 Yahoo is still an online powerhouse. The website still draws millions and revenue is steady if flat. But the recession brought a "dizzying barrage" of layoffs and staff shake-ups.
"Everyone at Yahoo these days is suffering from re-org fatigue,'' said one woman there for five years. "It's distracting and it's demoralising.''
Former creative director Cynthia Maller joined in 1999 and left in 2006. "In the early days, we all loved the brand and felt very loyal to our founding bosses,'' she said .
"it was a place where you could invent things and never worry about making mistakes. Nobody was afraid of losing their jobs and you had these incredibly brilliant engineers and ad-sales guys."
After the dot-com bust, says Maller, "a lot of those people left, the economy took a downturn, and the fear set in. The consensus culture took over and people got scared."
With chief financial officer Tim Morse filling in as CEO, speculation is now widespread that Yahoo will put itself up for sale.
Private equity firm Silver Lake, said to have already approached Yahoo, is one name in the frame. Another possibility is the Chinese group Alibaba in which Yahoo has a 40 per cent stake . Bidder No 3 might be Microsoft whose $47.5 billion offer was turned down three years ago. Yahoo's value today thought to be less than half that.
Otherwise, Yahoo might "somehow figure out a clear path forward," said the Mercury News.
Many fear it will be an uphill battle. A one-time manager said, "Just like RIM (Research in Motion) and others, you can be the darling until someone prettier comes along.
"That's both the beautiful and the brutal side of tech. Once that 'it factor' is lost, it's hard to get it back.''