Yahoo, amp, apex, acquisitions, microsoft, online advertising

Ad platform Apex becomes AMP, Yahoo promises release in Q3

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang today promised the world 500 to 700 engineers will complete Yahoo's brand advertising platform by the third quarter. The announcement was Yahoo's second public response today to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer threat to lower Microsoft's bid for Yahoo over the weekend. According to the clip above, the platform — once called Project Apex, now dubbed AMP — is supposed to provide the technology for publishers to sell their own display, search, mobile and video ads through a Yahoo marketplace. Problem is Apex/AMP is not near completion, commenters on our post "Employee: Yahoo is a mess inside," tell us.

"Apex is indeed a mess," writes commenter DeanMartin. "The release timelines are ridiculously optimistic for a system of its magnitude/complexity." Another commenter blames management: "Apex is being run by the very same morons in Burbank who claim Panama is a huge success."Commenter Groovy Gnome blames the MBAs, too:

The number one cause of the mess: No project management skills to be seen all around. No accountability. I think all the managers there need to go back to school and really learn what it takes to lead a project of this scale.

9:00 AM on Mon Apr 7 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
1,439 views
3 comments

Comments

saywhaaa at 09:35 AM on 04/07/08
Reply by Email
*

and it does your dishes and mows your lawn too
come on now.....
anotherinvestor at 10:18 AM on 04/07/08
Reply by Email
*

After spending most of the video showing some fake example of how wrong everything is today - the video goes on to tell you that everything will be much better, without giving any meaningful screenshots or examples.

If the platform supposed to be launched in Q3, it should be in QA now, based on how Yahoo does it project mgmt. Which means they should have a working example.

But clearly they don't. Don't expect anything in Q3, it will be delayed as usual, with some more finger-pointing (MSFT distracted us, we didn't have the hardware, newspaper guys are too slow to move etc).

As usual, Yahoo ovwerprommises and under delivers. Newspaper consortium guys were promised this platform last year. When yahoo realized that they can't deliver - they bought Rightmedia. When they realized that they bought a dog, since all the brains from RM jumped ship, they decided to rewrite it. Hence - another year or two got wasted.

Here is another example of how as response to MSFT - a bunch of idiots from Sr. Mgmt in technology and product got together over couple of weekends and decided to "awesomize" (another moronic term from yahoo) Apex, by producing some idiotic video.

Good job guys - we are all "awesomized".
HiQCode at 08:21 PM on 04/07/08
Reply by Email
*

@anotherinvestor - NPC was promised this platform in April this year (not last year). It is apparently delayed a Quarter to Q3 - not unexpected for a project of this magnitude and Yahoo. It is likely there will be something in Q3 - but so what? The platform will need time to mature - Advertisers and Publishers need to migrate over and start using it - and - it needs to be tuned. This process takes 6 months. We'll see differential income added to Yahoos bottom line in Q2 2009. If it helps boost the offer from MS then that is based on speculation. All the best to them.