Let Yahoo be Yahoo

Since Jerry Yang and the rest of the Yahoo board rejected the unsolicited Microsoft buyout offer the news has been dominated by talk of Carl Ichan, shareholder lawsuits, poison-pills, etc. all complaining that the company is not acting in the best interest of the shareholders. These people need to get over it, and let Yahoo be Yahoo.

Seriously, what are they complaining about?!? Yahoo is a profitable company. Yahoo was stable until Microsoft came along and made the offer in the first place. Yahoo would have continued to be stable afterwards if it was not for these same shareholders. By publicly complaining, filing lawsuits, trying to oust the board and Yang, they have nothing but destabilize the company, and drive share prices down. As a result there has been a mass exodus of executives and other staff, further destabilizing the company.

What the shareholders, and even Microsoft, do not get is that companies like Yahoo are not like other companies that can be bought, sold, and integrated. They are an innovative company that had bad leadership for so long under Terry Semel that they are just starting to turn around and get back on their feet.

Also, they belong to the Internet community at large as much as they belong to the shareholders.  For the first generation of Internet users Yahoo was their starting point for all things on the Internet, and have a connection to the company that is of greater value than any share price. So let Yahoo be Yahoo.