Sunday, July 13, 2008

Poor Jerry Yang - He needs a hug from Larry and Sergey



This is the photos from Reuters(I don't know if it's ok or not to re-post like this. If it's not, please do let me know and I'll take them off).

I BET all of you have already seen it somewhere(If you haven't, save it to your disk...now). I know that all of you know the Yahoo-Google vs Microsoft-Carl Icahn story and how hard Jerry has been through, but it's still too hard to not mention it in a tech blog such as mine. Here I don't want to repeat the truth, but just have two points to share with you guys what I learned from this whole thing:

1. Never do your enemy any favor, never, no matter how neglectable they are.

There are two cases in the IT history that everyone should remember. One, IBM helps brand MS-DOS, two, Yahoo helps Google and outsources their search to the latter. This was said to be a bless for Google, because back to that time, although Google had been quite famous, they had some problem with their financial situation. It was Yahoo that helps the future search giant out. I couldn't really think of how Jerry feels at this time, but it must be very complicated.

2. This whole internet business changes fast, faster than you can ever think of.

Several years ago, Yahoo was like a glory, a glory in the internet history that will never be shaded. To me, that was like yesterday. But now, Yahoo is like a poor guy who used to be rich but go bankrupt overnight. How about Google? 10 years ago, I think few people knows them, really, except for those really geeky computer folks, but now they are the super star. 10 years from now on, who knows if Google will become the next Yahoo, and if Facebook will become the next Google(say...). Maybe one day you'll see a picture with Mark giving a warm hug and pat to Larry. So, the take home message is, if you want to survive in this business, always be cautious and be prepared, and don't be surprised if you see bigshot dies in one day.

By the way, for the past 5 months, I've seen Larry and Sergey for several times(basically every Friday), I've never seen Larry wearing any clothes other than his black shirt(Sergey changes this time..). Can someone tell me why?

No comments: