Yahoo! Can't Stand Still

By Rick Aristotle Munarriz
July 11, 2008 | Comments (3)

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There's no point in ducking for cover when you're under fire. Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) knows that its days are numbered if it stays crouched in a foxhole, given the seemingly endless ammo being stockpiled by Carl Icahn and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT).

Yahoo! needs to fire back, or at the very least begin attacking something else.

So kudos to Yahoo! for keeping its eyes on the prize, even as it comes under heavy bombardment. This week has seen Yahoo!:

  • Launch an ad-supported Web games site.
  • Hook up with Turner Broadcasting in an ad and content deal.
  • Lend a hand to developers by offering up its search toolkit, through the debut of BOSS.

Beefing up Yahoo! Games with hundreds of diversions won't make Pogo.com parent Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: ERTS) quiver. The deal with Turner is small potatoes, compared to the reach of Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) third-party partnerships. And having other sites turn to Yahoo! for search, in exchange for hosting the company's paid-search ads, isn't entirely original.

However, stack all of those seemingly minor moves together, and Yahoo!'s standing a bit taller today than it was a week ago.

With its annual shareholder meeting now just a couple of weeks away, Yahoo! can't control its shareholders' disappointment. Its leaders can only keep building their company until it gets taken away. If anything, it reflects well on Yahoo! that the company can pull off so many new ventures dependent on outside parties, since those folks must be uncertain about who they'll truly be working with by this time next year.

One foot in front of the other is the only way, even if Yahoo! is ultimately just walking off a cliff.

Other survival-guide reading:

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Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz feels that cliffs can be dangerous, unless you're wearing a golden parachute. He does not own shares in any of the companies in this story. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. The Fool has a disclosure policy.

Comments from our Foolish Readers

Help us keep this a respectfully Foolish area! This is a place for our readers to discuss, debate, and learn more about the Foolish investing topic you read about above. Help us keep it clean and safe. If you believe a comment is abusive or otherwise violates our Fool's Rules, please report it via the Report this Comment Report this Comment icon found on every comment.

  • Report this Comment On July 11, 2008, at 12:25 PM, slade15342 wrote:

    Oh the woes of being a publicly traded company. There are many upside factors, I won't lie. But when your board can be ousted because it doesn't want to sell, and that is foreseen to the shareholders as 'not in their best interest', then the corporation is getting shafted. I address this situation with Yahoo and Budweiser in detail

    http://www.thegearedinvestor.com/budweiser_yahoo.shtml

    This deal should never happen.

  • Report this Comment On July 11, 2008, at 1:29 PM, fongfong200 wrote:

    This is interesting. If under unfavorable circumstances, Yahoo can still accomplish all of this, then it suggests a lot about Yahoo's internal strength.

  • Report this Comment On July 12, 2008, at 11:02 AM, thedeathadder wrote:

    Did you notice that Pogo.com is listed on games.yahoo.com?

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