March 20th, 2005
Esther and Jerry Yang talk business and Yahoo buys Flickr
Esther interviewed Chief Yahoo Jerry Yang, getting his thoughts on the tenth anniversary of the company he co-founded. Sounds like he has a good perspective: "The last ten years feels like period of validation, and hopefully for next ten years we will do what we wanted to do ten years ago. We have a critical mass of users, services, infrastructure, Wireless and broadband, which are all coming together in a way. The pieces are there, but so much is still undefined. We are at the forefront of new stage of industry."
As part of the next ten years of Yahoo, Jerry announced that his company acquired Flickr (which has been widely rumored for the last few weeks).
Esther then asked Jerry about participating in the Chinese market, and particularly the issue of government censorship. He talked like a pragmatic politician, and someone with a financial interest in China, and stayed away from taking sides. "It’s not Jerry versus the government of China." He said that when a Chinese news executive explained the reason behind censorship, it seem 100 percent rational to him. "Censorship is a wrong value, but after fifty years of no second opinion, having fifty little Web sites requires a transition. The government has to make a transition, but it will be managed by the government, not by anyone else."
He said that Yahoo needs to become more open about how users can participate in Yahoo’s environment as the biggest change desired by users. Part of that participatory user environment is the forthcoming Yahoo 360, which includes social networking and blogging, Flickr and becoming a place to create and distribute content. "The best creative content is going to get on the Web. Creative minds want to publish in this medium."
Yahoo is developing relationships in Hollywood and elsewhere to corral content that will attract and keep users on the Yahoo network. "We have to be a place to watch short films or to listen to radio," Jerry said. At the same time he said Yahoo must also be the place where people congregate and discuss things with the participation of the most creative minds. Jerry admitted that this next phase of growth for Yahoo and the Internet experience is going to be challenging but also much more interesting and useful than the first ten years.
In keeping with the theme of trust that started off PC Forum, as Yahoo (Amazon, Google, MSN, AOL, etc.) gathers more content, services and sticky community features, it will need to make sure that it is more open, allowing users to get what they want, not just what Yahoo deems relevant…
Dan Farber, editor-in-chief of CNET News.com, has more than 20 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
