Internet: Is Yahoo! going back to its roots?

One of the most enduring feature of Google, and possibly the one that brings users back over and over, is the simple white screen with a logo and a search box. Yes, if you look around, you can find links to other services but Google never fails to remind, even subliminally, that the real reason you are on their site is to find stuff on the internet.

Compare that to Yahoo! It started as the original large search engine. But soon afterwards, the watchword in the industry was "content is king." So Yahoo! diverted itself from its core mission and became - in the trendy language so beloved by internet users, a "portal." And the front page became a sea of information, links and adverts - and the search facility took a back seat.

Whereas Google has become an indexer and (re)publisher of third party material, Yahoo tried to become the brand. And its efforts have not been rewarded.

Everything from photo galleries (which Google has) to stock quotes have attracted visitors but not revenue, or at least not the revenue that might have been expected. In short, Yahoo has lost its way.

Yesterday, Yahoo!'s CEO Terry Semel resigned, although some say he was pushed. Semmel had a lifetime's career in Hollywood but the internet is, some wag once put it, another world.

Well, it is certainly a virtual world where success is measured in real world results and under Semel's leadership of the past six years or so. Under Semel, Yahoo! tried to buy Google before it floated. The approach was rebuffed and so Yahoo! bought in similar adserver technology. But it took almost five years to integrate by which time Google had both outstripped Yahoo! and, worse, gained an entrenched position.

Yahoo! concentrated on content - with Semel's old studio providing a significant part of that. Some of Yahoo!'s brightest and best have walked away, watching the value of the company plummet - down more than 35% in the past 18 months, despite at least some not so bad earnings news.

The job isn't going to be advertised: the man who has perhaps lost the most under Semel's reign says he was a "mentor" - but he's going to take over his job. That's Jerry Yang. He co founded Yahoo! with David Filo in 1994. Although he has been a part of the senior management team since then, he has not previously led the company.

So what, then, will Yang do. Well, the markets think it's a good thing: the price has jumped almost 7% since the news came out. The feeling is that Yahoo! might now start to focus on the real reason people go it - to find stuff. Interestingly, some people are now saying that Yahoo! search results are more filtered than Google's - with less "name squatting" sites and ad sites cropping up in the top pages of results.

Perhaps what Yahoo! most urgently needs is to clean up the design of its front page. After all, the last place one wants to spend time searching for a search box is once you have already chosen your search engine.