Customer Reviews

Do You? Business the Yahoo! Way

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I've written about 20 Amazon.com reviews. This is the first one-star rating I've given. Too bad there's no zero-star rating-this pile of poo-poo deserves it.

The authors say virtually nothing about Yahoo that you cannot glean from Yahoo's own published information. In fact, that is the source for almost the entire book-primarily Yahoo press releases and previously-published interviews with Yahoo executives. The funny thing is, they consider this to be real research, even quoting the source. But since when did "Anon" on "NewsBytes News Network" and "Herring Online" become referencable research sources? In this book they are, ditufully listed at each chapter end.

What upsets me is the repetition. The authors breathlessly inform me of several acquisitions and intitiatives over and over and over...and treat each one as if they were presenting it for the first time. I counted no less than four breathless announcements of the "eGroups acquisition, adding 17 Million international users and 8000 message groups." Guys, one breathless announcement is enough, thanks.

Avoid this one. When I get rid of a book (all too infrequently!) it goes to the local Friends of the Library Sale, Goodwill, or friends. For the first time in my life, I tossed a book in the trash. No other place for it.

Yahoo! is the company that defines success in the dot.com era and this is the book that defines its story. Vlamis and Smith have done an excellent job in writing a compelling account of Yahoo!'s rise to Internet glory while focusing on the key lessons that next generation entrepreneurs will have to know by heart. It's a must read for anyone seeking true insight into dot.com glory days as created, in large part, by Yahoo!

This book provides only limited information about Yahoo, you can get almost the same from public sources like WikiPedia. The book lacks unbiased view on the company. The authors only admire with Yahoo steps and decisions and provide no critical view. Even in the chapter about mistakes they only list mistakes of the other companies, and not a single mistake by Yahoo. The authors did not communicated with the management of Yahoo and only got the information from the public sources, but this is no excuse for the poor quality of the book. Take, for example, Roger Lowenstein, who wrote "Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist" without communicating with Warren Buffet, but have produced an excellent book, which is even better than the writings of other authors who had "access" to Warren Buffet.

The second edition of this book, released on November 27, 2000, doesn't improve the situation. It covers several events that occurred in the beginning of 2000, like the 50% decline of the stock price of Yahoo. But the events are not covered appropriately, for example, the author admire that the Yahoo stock did "only" fall 50% while the other stocks got as much as 90% decline.

I would recommend "Inside Yahoo!" by Karen Angel instead of this book.

This book gives some insights in how to do business well in dot.com industry. It also talks about the founder of Yahoo! As Yahoo! is quite a successful online website, I think those who are interested in it should read this book.

So if you wear flannel shirts and already know everything there is to know about Yahoo! already, you probably know how this book turns out. The gloss may have fallen from Yahoo! along with the NASDAQ, but the story of how this company came to be a household name is still well worth exploring. So if you want learn about the Yahoo! experience in easily digestible bites, here's your read.