Terry Semel Thinks Yahoo Should Grow Up Already

Terry Semel Thinks Yahoo Should Grow Up Already
That means going broadband and taking on AOL and MSN. Lots of luck.
Sunday, September 15, 2002
By Daniel Roth

For almost three years Ted Meisel's calls to Yahoo went unanswered. As CEO of GoTo.com--now called Overture--Meisel knew that Yahoo could make money by using his pay-for-placement search offerings. Companies were lapping up the service, which lets, say, findaplumber.com pop to the top when a user searches for "leak" or "clogged toilet" or "plumber." But with dot-com advertisers lining up to get a spot on Yahoo, the company hardly needed to field unsolicited pitches. "It wasn't something that they were willing to make time for," says Meisel.

Then last fall an odd thing happened: Yahoo called in Meisel for a test run. Within three months Overture was placing its listings on Yahoo, and by April the two companies had inked a three-year deal. By early this summer the partnership was responsible for an estimated 10% of Yahoo's $226 million in second-quarter revenues--all with Yahoo's barely lifting a finger or spending a dime.