San Francisco--At the closing session of the Web 2.0 Conference, Yahoo cofounder and Chief Yahoo Jerry Yang assessed the famous Web portal's first decade. If he had the chance to do things differently, he said, "I don't think I would've taken Yahoo public so quickly."
The excitement surrounding that 1996 initial public offering spilled over to other Internet companies. "Do we allow our competitors to raise the capital and get the exposure (as a result of Yahoo's IPO)?" Yang asked the audience.
Boom Days--Again?
That early IPO was a principal contributor to the Internet bubble of the late 1990s, and Yahoo was one of the most visible victims (although not fatally) of the resulting bust early this decade. "We took our eyes off emerging trends" during the downturn of 2001 to 2003, according to Yang.
Looking to the future, Yang noted user expectations have risen. "Our challenge is to stay current, stay new, stay fresh for our users. I'm more excited now about what Yahoo can do than I was in the late nineties when it was all talk and no action," Yang told the crowd of Web executives. "There's a sense of excitement about old meeting new (in our medium) that other industries lack."
Among the challenges facing the company is retaining the trust it has built with its customers. "Data in the Yahoo sense is a very personal thing," Yang said. "Yahoo is in the trust business." This past spring, the company launched its own spyware blocker, for example.
Still, Yang admits the company has room for improvement. "We're not giving people enough control," he said. Take the example of Yahoo's crowded home page. "How do you drive more control without losing the ability to tell people what's new?" Yang asked.
Censorship is another challenge, and a sensitive one given Yahoo's battles with the Chinese government over censorship of the site's content. "[Chinese] society is changing very fast. There's what's visible [the new skyscrapers, for example], and there's what's less visible, which is what people are saying."
Yang said that on his recent visits to China, he hears "a lot of confidence," especially among young people. But ultimately the country needs freedom of speech, he said. "By being there and providing the infrastructure... if you can influence them [the younger generation] now, you can make a difference."
Yang claims the company's relationship with China must be handled diplomatically: "Not by saying 'you must do this' or 'you must do that'."
What keeps a 30-something billionaire awake at night? "I'm worried about the next two guys at Stanford who are dropping out of their Ph.D. [programs]," Yang told the audience.
Threats to Media Freedom
Earlier in the day, Stanford professor and Creative Commons chairman Lawrence Lessig had the audience on its feet with his presentation on the dangers lurking for makers of new media.
Lessig claims the shift in the U.S. from a free culture to a culture based on permission began with changes to copyright law in 1978. Prior to that, people had to explicitly request a copyright for material they created. But since 1978, copyright is implied.
The law is at odds with the capabilities of ordinary PCs. Now, the right mix of hardware and software can give anyone the ability to remix images, video, and sound the way people previously "remixed" text when they cited previous sources--with attribution--in their writing.
"The laws as they exist today make remix illegal," Lessig said, citing Danger Mouse's recent combination of the Beatles' "White Album" and Jay-Z's "Black Album" to create his "Grey Album." Now people must get permission to use other media, even with full attribution, and such permission is difficult to attain.
Lessig gave the example of a documentarian who requested a one-minute video clip from a 2002 interview with President Bush on "Meet the Press." NBC refused the request, saying the clip was unflattering to the president. Lessig describes this as the "privatization of the president."
The result of this legal assault on free speech is to drive free speech underground, according to Lessig. He claims the solution is to "stop the apologists who back up the extremists."
Ad Choices