Well before Microsoft and Yahoo started discussing a merger that later fell apart, the venerable search engine seemed a little lost in its journey to an uncertain future. As we look at the latest news surrounding Yahoo, we can ponder what kind of soul stands revealed by the company; is it a phoenix or a zombie? Will the deal with Google save it – and if not, what's next?
The legend of the phoenix states that the bird, after having lived a long life, dies in a fire, only to rise from the ashes, young, energetic and reinvigorated, better and stronger than when it entered the flames. A zombie, of course, is a shambling undead creature, hardly more than the shell of the human it once was, eternally hunting for brains. The question is, which one is Yahoo?
We know how Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer might answer that question. When he and Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang could not agree on a purchase price for Yahoo, Ballmer walked away from the deal. This inspired Carl Icahn, billionaire and activist holder of Yahoo stock, to go to war against the search engine in an attempt to push his own slate of candidates onto the company's board of directors – a slate that would pursue Icahn's agenda to rekindle discussions in the hope that the software giant could be persuaded to purchase Yahoo after all. Perhaps he would agree with Ballmer's assessment that Yahoo isn't worth nearly as much as Yang and certain others seem to think.
So is Yahoo turning into a zombie, then? Sadly, recent events would seem to confirm this. But they don't tell the full story. Yahoo has a history and some real staying power; it is one of the few companies that went through the fire caused by the tech bubble bursting about seven or eight years ago, and came out the other end relatively intact. Let's look at the current state of the search engine, and see if we can sift out some hope from the ashes.
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