ON YAHOO! DOING CONTENT

STONES AND GLASS HOUSES

CNET has an article titled "Can Yahoo! do content?" (via memeorandum), where they get in line and take some pot-shots at Lloyd Braun, Yahoo!'s senior content honcho.  The article establishes it's theme early on:

"...Yahoo's plan to become a major Internet content player is treading water. Yahoo Media has lost ground to rivals in key areas and has yet to goose advertising sales with a runaway content hit, which many expected Braun to deliver when he arrived with fanfare in November, 2004."

And of course, Valleywag, silicon valley's newest gossip rag (can it still be a rag if it's web-based only?) gleefully piles on with yet another story predicting Mr. Braun's imminent departure:

"ZDNet comes back to the season's hot question: "Does Lloyd Braun need to leave Yahoo?" And the answer is still "Hell yes!"

It's amazing how the folks can be so impatient with a seemingly easy target.  Figuring out a content business for a mainstream global portal in an environment with so many moving pieces, is a task that'll likely take a few years to figure out and get right.

Especially given that we're barely at the beginning of the end of broadband deployment in the US, to paraphrase Winston Churchill.  It'll still be another two to three years before we have truly mainstream broadband deployment in over 50% of US homes.  And that's one of the bare minimum requirements before truly robust content models can be developed on the internet.

To pile on Yahoo! and it's executives after such a short time (Braun's only been on the job for less than 15 months), seems more than unfair.

It's especially interesting coming from CNET itself, given that it's taken them over a decade to finally figure out how to do text-based tech content right.  Come on guys, you've been there yourselves.  Ease up a bit.