What do you get when you cross a gorilla and a donkey?

 
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The web search and advertising business is a horserace. Whoever's going to win is going to need to drive for the finish line and go fast. Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft nor their combination seems up to the challenge.

Jerry Yang's recent letter to shareholders is fascinating but doesn't tell us anything worthwhile about why Yahoo should fight off the Monster from Redmond. Yahoo's performance says more.

Yahoo has talked a good game, but it hasn't delivered. It's a donkey. It may look like a horse and it may try to run fast, but you're not going to win the horserace with a donkey.

Microsoft, on the other hand is a gorilla. Other than packaged software and conserving cash, it doesn't do much well. Since 1995, Microsoft has spent over ten billion dollars trying to do something really successful on the net.

Gorillas don't run fast either. You won't win the net horserace with a gorilla.

Now Microsoft wants to mate its gorilla with the donkey. You won't get a racehorse that way.

You will get lots of noise and perhaps some entertainment. Gorillas and donkeys don't mate successfully and the longer they try the easier it is for someone else to win the race.

If you're a Yahoo shareholder, pray that Jerry Yang forgets that Yahoo was the alternative to finishing his PhD dissertation and that he takes Microsoft's offer. Then you will be one of the winners of this hostile takeover, even if Yahoo is not.

The other winner will be that racehorse, Google, who will get further and further ahead while either Yahoo tries to fight off Microsoft or the two try to mate.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.

 
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Wally Bock has helped people learn to be great bosses for more than a quarter century. His latest book, Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership, makes learning key leadership principles almost effortless by teaching through a story and providing lists of resources for further growth.

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