I feel for Jerry Yang. Jerry of course is CEO of Yahoo and immensely wealthy. I met him back in 1994 when Yahoo was just getting started. I am sure there are times he longs for those days when life was easy, he was becoming a "rock-Internet star" and the concept of earnings per share was not on the radar screen.

Yesterday was earnings announcement day for Yahoo. (Our Kenneth Corbin of Internet.com covered the announcement.) Jerry and colleague Sue Decker (I remember meeting her in 1995 when she was a stock analyst at DLJ in New York and wanted to learn more about the Internet) cannot be pleased with the Wall Street reception. I know the feeling better than anyone. It is tough being a CEO of a public company that disappoints Wall Street. To me it is like getting a bad grade on on a school term paper. You did your research, you spent hours writing the paper, you proofed it, and then you get a bad grade. You carry around the taste of that bad grade for months. You go back to work and try even harder to get a good grade on the next paper. Some CEOs do not care about the grade as long as they keep their jobs. I think Jerry is similar to me -- he cares.

I still contend that Yahoo needs to change course and accept being a media company instead of a search company. Go out and roll the dice. Buy Cnet or make some other bold move like buying IAC with your paper while it still has value. Keep working on search and related assets, but do not fight the tide of losing search market share to Google. A strong media company with a big search business could be worth twice what Yahoo now sells for.