Yahoo, triumphant over a host of other wannabe Web portals in the '90s, resurgent in the early part of this decade, has never really gotten used to not being No. 1. Apple, for all its arrogance, recognizes that the Mac is not the best-selling PC brand.

Yahoo's marketing department should spend all its time explaining to Internet users why they should use Yahoo instead of its competitors. That's what Apple does with its "Mac vs. PC" ads. Each commercial humorously sticks to its talking points comparing the advantages of Macs over PCs. Apple does this because it remains far behind in the PC market and needs to convince customers to switch from more popular products.

That's what Yahoo needs to do in search. But instead of saying why users should, it markets itself the way Apple markets the iPod — as a ubiquitous aspect of a certain way of life. Apple can do this because it already dominates a market full of similar digital music players. A better product helped sell the iPod to the masses. But an advertising campaign which keeps people associating themselves with the brand reinforces Apple's dominance.

Yahoo doesn't have that luxury. It still dominates, but in tiny niches. It needs to say why Yahoo News is better than Google News and the New York Times. It needs to say why Yahoo Fantasy Sports games are the most popular on the Web. It needs to say why anyone who owns a digital camera should upload their pictures to Flickr, not Facebook. But instead, Yahoo spends all it's time trying too hard to convince users how wonderfully wacky it is.

What's tragic about that is that the brand Yahoo is trying to create isn't particularly attractive. Look, it screams, we're so desperate to be seen as kooky kids, we're willing to hit our top executives in the face with rubber balls!

Perhaps the real target of the campaign is Yahoo's own employees. Morale is in the dumpster at its Sunnyvale headquarters. "Bleeding purple," Yahoo's longtime catchphrase for displaying loyalty to the company, has come to refer to the endless exodus of employees. Wearing purple may boost the mood of longtime Yahoos. But it will hurt recruiting for those outside the cult. What adult wants to work at the company which still hasn't figured out what it wants to be when it grows up?

Mismanagement and bureaucratic balkanization continue to rule Yahoo. The team developing the new homepage, both the front-end design and the back-end architecture, worked in a vacuum as executives above them kept getting reorged. The mockup of the new design looks great (and yes, the logo will be purple). But the amount of incredibly profitable front-page advertising space was significantly reduced. That's because nobody bothered to discuss the project with ad sales until months of work were done. Even then engineers had to step in to fix problem.

Famously unproductive products chief Ash Patel touted third-party widgets, such as a tool that let Yahoo users view upcoming DVDs in their Netflix queue. But Netflix was a consolation prize. Yahoo's product managers have plans to include updates from Facebook and messages from Google's email service, Gmail, on users' homepages. But Facebook and Google have refused to give Yahoo access.

What was supposed to be a big news event ended up as a tease for reporters to placate shareholders and stir up developer interest for an event this weekend. Instead of a seismic announcement to undo the publicity damage from the botched Microsoft deal, Yahoo will have to settle for the slightest of tremors. It's not the shakeup Yahoo needs.

He aptly played a janitor in Dugan's previous "All Hands! The Movie," whose star, Jeff Weiner, recently left the company. If only Patel would copy Weiner's moves. Starring in videos seems to be all the Yahoo oldtimer does these days. Anyone care to send a copy of his latest starring role?

• Microsoft never wanted to buy Yahoo in the first place and that's why the merger negotiations broke down. In a presentation to Yahoo shareholders, the current Yahoo board argued for its own survival, suggesting that "the record casts doubt on whether Microsoft was ever committed to a whole company acquisition." Except that it was Yang who took five weeks to respond to Microsoft's February 1 bid for the company, cooling Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's interest in paying Yahoo shareholders a 62 percent premium for their stakes.
• Yahoo's latest reorganization puts the company in a position to independently succeed. Yang fed this line to Capital Research fund manager Gordon Crawford at a meeting last Tuesday in Los Angeles, according to BoomTown. Crawford didn't buy it — likely because he's heard that Yahoos hate the uninspiring, inept and lazy Ash Patel, the man whom Yang put in charge of a new Global Products group, despite internal rancor and protest. Crawford's now backing corporate raider Carl Icahn in his quest to unseat the Yahoo board.
• Yahoo's recently departed execs were mere "MBA types."At the Tuesday meeting, Crawford — who controls 6.5 percent of the company's shares — also asked Yang about a recent rash of departures from the company's top ranks. Yang told Crawford the defectors were just "MBA types," which would be nice to believe, but isn't true. Yes, Yahoo lost a pair of suits in content chief Jeff Weiner and Brad Garlinghouse. But in the last month its also lost geeks such as Flickr founders Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield, Del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter, search scientist Qi Lu, and data-mining rocket scientist Usama Fayyad.
• Yang believes an AOL-Yahoo merger better serves shareholders than an acquisition by Microsoft. Yahoo shareholders disagree that tying up with an aging brand would help. As one major Yahoo shareholder told us, "Two wrongs don't make a right."
• Yahoo needs to keep brand and search advertising together. Crawford asked Yahoo about this one at the meeting too. Probably because, like us, he's heard from Madison Avenue ad buyers who say that clients don't usually buy their brand and search advertising from the same place. Yang believes otherwise — because its a reason to keep Yahoo independent. Back in our logic class, they called that one a tautology.
• Carl Icahn's board of directors will not be able to negotiate as well with once-more merger-ready Microsoft as the current board. Says our shareholder source: "The big fight you'll get from the Yahoo board now will be: We can get a better price from Microsoft than Carl. He's too cozy with them." Except Yahoo's board and Yang didn't prove themselves worthy negotiators the first time around, did they? Here's why: Instead of reacting to facts, Yang and company preferred to adhere to beliefs. If Yahoo were a religion rather than a business, they'd be set.

(Photo by Yodel Anecdotal)

In fact, since details of Decker's plan leaked last week, Yang has little to say about them at all except to insist that Patel get the gig. This despite vocal protests presumably similar to the one we got from commenter bluepurple:

I'm appalled a the above comments implying that Ash is even remotely qualified. In my time he was focused on looking the part of an executive. Flashy car - check, Steve Jobs uniform - check, ridiculously expensive watch - check. He's unable to inspire, is a terribly unfocused speaker, and had no concept of how to execute. His teams were mostly shuffling around throwing out words like "platform" and "innovation". He was a non-factor at Yahoo. Placing Ash (who was not part of Weiner's team) in such a large role is clearly Sue seizing control of the entire company. Ash is just a stand in.

• Loathed EVP Ash Patel will head up Global Products group.
• Global Partner Solutions EVP Hilary Schneider will oversee both ad sales and product development for the entire US region and be Patel's peer.
• Scott Moore, who runs the Yahoo Media Group, will report to Schneider. Though he has startup offers.
• Brad Garlinghouse will probably leave by the end of the summer.
• Yahoo Search’s Vish Makhijani will leave the company.
• Front Door head Tapan Bhat will either report to Patel in Global Products or bolt.
• Yahoo SVP for Strategic Alliances, Chris Bolte, will leave the company.

In every jest, there's a grain of truth. Later in the movie, Filo appears in a disorganized office, while Ash Patel, the executive ostensibly in charge of Yahoo's platforms and infrastructure, cleans up around him. Not a bad metaphor, except that insiders say they're surprised if Patel even does the clean-up work.

While Google's engineers are awash in a sea of computing power, and are challenged to come up with ideas to use it all, Yahoo's developers cope with an IT infrastructure that is at once too centralized and too disorganized. New CTO Ari Balogh has talked about fixing Yahoo's spaghetti code with new layers of APIs, or ways for independent developers to access Yahoo's websites and data. But making Yahoo more open to outside programmers won't fix the underlying problems with the company's code and infrastructure. Former Yahoo engineers talk about servers that its datacenter operators are afraid to unplug, because no one knows what they do.

It's no wonder, really, that Microsoft executives had talked about discarding Yahoo's technology and introducing their own if they bought the company. Microsoft may be no great shakes when it comes to Web technology, but having started later, there's less accumulated cruft to scrape off. Until Filo is pried away from his iron grip on Yahoo's servers, and do-nothing layabouts like Patel are fired, it's hard to imagine things improving at Yahoo.

Jerry Yang, CEO He'll be a large Microsoft shareholder after the deal goes through, so it's likely he'll get a board seat. And perhaps he'll get to keep the "Chief Yahoo" title.

David Filo, cofounder Might be named a Microsoft Fellow, working in datacenter operations — as he prefers.

Sue Decker, President Gone. There's no position Microsoft can give her that will suit her ambitions. Not to mention the hash she's made of things at Yahoo.

Blake Jorgensen. CFO Gone. Microsoft doesn't need another CFO, and he's a close Decker ally.

Ari Balogh, CTO Bad timing: Balogh just left VeriSign for Yahoo this week. If he'll settle for a title below CTO, Microsoft might grudgingly make room for him.

Marco Boerries, EVP, Connected Life Gone. He's widely disliked within Yahoo, and Microsoft already has plenty of mobile dealmakers.

Michael Callahan, General Counsel Gone. First, we fire all the lawyers.

Gregory Coleman, EVP, Global Sales Already announced his "retirement." Even more gone than he already was.

Usama Fayyad, Chief Data Officer A keeper. Microsoft needs better data analysis.

Qi Lu, EVP, Engineering Search A keeper.

Michael Murray, Chief Accounting Officer Gone.

Jill Nash, Chief Communications Officer Could stay. Microsoft desperately needs better PR in the Valley.

Ash Patel, EVP, Platforms and Infrastructure Division Gone. He's already checked out, insiders say, but it will take a takeout to dislodge him from his desk.

Libby Sartain, Chief People Yahoo Already rumored to be out.

Hilary Schneider, EVP, Global Partner Solutions Could stay, though she's a Decker ally. Microsoft lacks credibility with newspapers, Schneider's strong suit.

Jeff Weiner, EVP, Network Division Gone. Weiner, a Semel guy, has managed to hold onto his job against the odds. But he's not respected in Redmond.

While Balogh's erstwhile employer has won grudging admiration for running the Internet's domain-name system, it's the company everyone in the Valley loves to hate. Whether it's for the time it owned domain-name registrar Network Solutions, or its botched launch of SiteFinder, a service which redirected failed domain-name requests to a VeriSign search engine, everyone seems to have a reason to dislike VeriSign. At Yahoo, Balogh will have the opportunity to rise above that rap — or be sunk by it. (Photo by Leslie Walker/Washington Post)

"The only thing that's clear is many people in the upper rungs at Yahoo need to be fired as they continuously just get in the way of development by talking and not building," says the tipster. What I'd like to know is what some of these great ideas were. If they're brought into the light of day, I believe, Yahoo management might actually be shamed into greenlighting them. If your save-Yahoo plan is getting stymied by bureaucracy, drop me a line.