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.
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