Don’t believe the skeptics, 2009 was not a bad year for Yahoo. Well, at least not worse than the previous ones…
And looking ahead Yahoo and its investors might have a reason to pop open a bottle of champaign late 2010. Here are our predictions for the coming year!

 

Turmoil
Oh yes, there was a lot of turmoil indeed: a new CEO, massive lay-offs, the plummeting ad market, the closing down of loads of services and the amputation of Yahoo! Search. But let us look beyond that…

 

 


Redesign
2009 saw Yahoo’s homepage get a fresh new look with some daring choices. Less ads, more external links and apps!
Launched with a lot of fanfare, the redesign received a lot of criticism and headscratching from would be experts. Just like any of the previous changes Yahoo! made to their homepage.
But now the numbers are in and they’re not bad at all!

 

Time spent on Yahoo!’s homepage increased 20% while pageviews increased an impressive 9%. The clickthrough on the front ad increased a sweet 10% while the Today Spotlight clickthrough increased a massive 76%!
Though admittedly Yahoo could do a lot more exciting things with the apps integration and hopefully will soon.

 

Another bright spot?
Hands on CEO Carol Bartz is doing some smart cost cutting: axing lavish employee parties, closing Yahoo! offices from Christmas to New Year and yes closing down a lot of ill ventured money-losing services.

 

The list of casualities?
Yahoo! Geocities, video service Maven Networks, social networks Yahoo! 360 and SpotM, Yahoo! Go, Search Submit Pro, Karaoke & contest site Bix, MyWeb Bookmarking, Yahoo! Briefcase, Adsense rival Content Match, Yahoo! Chatrooms and early 2010 MyBlogLog will cease to exist.

 

Were those services critical for Yahoo!? Hardly, it would have taken loads of effort to make them best of breed and some focus was hardly needed.
Meanwhile Bartz is also trying to sell some crown jewels to the highest bidder like Hotjobs and Yahoo! Personals.

 

Ka-ching & Bing?
And then there’s the huge search deal with Microsoft off course!
Although the deal may not be so smart in the long run it’ll reap a lot of cash for Yahoo during the next few years. Outsourcing search to Bing will lower costs and could be worth as much as $500 million annually according to some analysts.

 

A warning for Carol though: cutting away the fat is ok, but please keep clear of the limbs!

 

Luckily Yahoo also signaled it might do some smart targeted acquisitions and Yahoo! keeps experimenting with in house talent. Resulting in the 2009 lauch of Yahoo! Meme, a surprisingly nice Twitter/Facebook alternative and the acquisitions of e-mail start-up Xoopit and the popular Arabic portal Maktoob.

 

Besides all that an advertising comeback wil surely lead to a Yahoo! revenue windfall in the nearby future and Yahoo!’s ever growing, massive userbase can only help with that.

 

Now where’s that champaign? Cheers!

 

> Will Yahoo! find its mojo in 2010? Will the Microsoft search deal be Yahoo!’s death stab or savior? And are you a fan of Yahoo! services?
Share your opinion!

 

For the purpose of full disclosure & fairness: I do own YHOO stock. Yes, I put my money where my mouth is!

 

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