Yang: Nothing motivates quite like a takeover threat

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang today predicted great things to come for the Internet mainstay, saying that the possibility of Microsoft buying the company had convinced everyone that they needed to show what Yahoo could accomplish on its own.

He spoke at the All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad a day after the tech-oriented crowd heard from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who broke off takeover talks May 3. Yang said he had ‘mixed feelings’ about the collapse of those negotiations.

But although Microsoft’s pursuit dragged on for three months -- and although that baton has been passed to agitator investors now speculating in Yahoo’s stock -- Yang said the outside view that his company is in chaos was unfair.

‘The perception of us as a company under siege is not accurate,’ Yang said. He said that after experiencing some stumbles before he retook the CEO job last year, Yahoo had refocused on serving as a great homepage for users and providing great search, e-mail and mobile functions.

Lost in all the takeover noise, Yang said...

... were Yahoo’s plans to open its platform to outside developers, as Microsoft and Facebook have. That step, he said, would greatly increase Yahoo’s value to consumers.

Likewise, Yang said investors weren’t giving Yahoo enough credit for a plan to make buying highly targeted display advertisements covering large segments of the Web as easy as buying ads tied to search terms. He said that opportunity was the largest the Net has seen to date.

As for that little company in Redmond, Wash., Yang said Yahoo was still ‘listening’ to Microsoft’s various ideas for a smaller deal. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s more than a week of listening so far.

Others at the conference found that puzzling. Barry Diller, head of IAC/InteractiveCorp, said on stage that he found the end of the original takeover talks ‘incomprehensible’ and that he doubted Yahoo would stay independent.

Standing far in the back of the audience, tapping away on his BlackBerry, stood eminent media dealmaker Herb Allen of Allen & Co.

Do you think any deals are being negotiated here at the conference, Mr. Allen?

‘No comment.’

--Joseph Menn