Yahoo!’s Rise to Fame Case Study

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There are many strategies used by Yahoo to manage its interdependencies. Yahoo!’s strategies used to manage symbiotic interdependencies (interdependencies that exist between an organisation and its suppliers and distributors) are, strategic alliances in the form of contracts and takeovers. Jeffrey Mallet recruited marketing experts to build the company’s advertising functions. These experts signed a contract with Yahoo to share information. Yahoo also acquired and took over a lot of web firms: in 1999 they acquired Rocketmail - an email service provider, Geocities – a web hosting service, and Broadcast.com – an audio and video programming on the WWW. In 2001 they acquired Hotjobs – a job hunting and placement company, and in 2005 they acquired Flickr – a photograph hosting and sharing site, and upcoming.org – an online social event calendar company. Yahoo formed these alliances and acquired these companies to improve their online content to interest new users and compete in the market. These companies could be considered suppliers and distributors as they assist Yahoo in operating different features it never had before. Yahoo is now as a vast base of knowledge in various services that it can offer users. Another strategy included is Cooptation where Yahoo recruited top managers from related industry. It also included the strategy of reputation where the organisation is held with high regard and trusted by other parties by working to be the portal of choice, and by continually refining its search and selling strategies.

Yahoo also used strategies to manage their competitive interdependencies (interdependencies that exist among organisation that compete for scare inputs and outputs), such as informal strategic alliances using contracts. Yahoo formed an alliance with Google (competitor) to use its high-quality search results as part of Yahoo!’s search listings. Yahoo and eBay (competitor) formed a marketing/advertising alliance in 2006, which gave Yahoo the contract for creating customised advertising on eBay’s web pages. Another strategy was merger/takeover – Yahoo brought up Rocketmail, Geocities, AltaVista etc.

The strategies Yahoo implemented had both positive and negative consequences. Yahoo did not succeed in purchasing or merging with YouTube, eBay or Amazon and its major competitors. Google has proven to be a serious threat, especially in the area of technological advancement. Yahoo was successful in creating major partnership with 7 major US newspapers for online job postings.