Great post Dave. I think you just about nailed it. I will defend Yahoo! by saying that I think they realized this about a year ago. We started to see several re-orgs that were focused on elevating the sales portion of the company. I also witnessed some real heavy hitters from the design side joining these newly formed groups to create compelling experiences for the ad network products. Was it too little too late? I hope not but it was without a doubt too late. I’d also like to add my bit on the problem; IMO, every executive/senior manager at Yahoo! should have been as fired up as Garlinghouse was with his peanut butter manifesto. He had the nerve to start talking about the elephant in the room. The problem is there is a herd of elephants stampeding the entire company and not enough outspoken bright leaders empowered to make the appropriate changes. My theory has always been that the internet changes too fast to keep management teams longer than 5 years. They just get too comfortable and rest on their laurels while the industry is changing beneath them. 1 month ago