Reading all the various views about Yahoo over the last 72 hours, it is pretty easy to join the crowd and opine, since all posts seem clustered at three get-well strategies:

• Fix search (gee, this is easier than I thought)
• Buy MySpace (refined from “Buy MySpace or Facebook” of the first 24 hours following the Jerry Yang announcement)
• Sell Yahoo to Private Equity/Microsoft/Newscorp

Do I agree with the wisdom of crowds here? Well, you’d have to be daft not to observe Yahoo’s search share declines and an effectively flat US story and think all is fine. The answers aren’t easy here – but all pundits agree it is critical to crack the code of search improvement beyond Panama, or there are troubled waters ahead.

Let’s start with search. Fixing search is as much a brand positioning as a technology issue. Pure play brands trump hybrid brands in the eyes of the consumer. Google is Search – pure and simple. Yahoo was search in eyes of consumers in the ‘90s and early ‘00s (and it ads reflected that very clearly), but with its content focus under the most recent regime, it started looking and acting as a media company. In the bull market of online advertising over the last 4 years, that seemed at first to be a winning play (maybe content WAS king), but now seeing Google at the precarious market tipping point in the US, that positioning as a media company is hurting the Yahoo cause. It’s time to reinforce Yahoo’s value here (and stress other unique elements of it search value proposition, like Yahoo Answers). Just don’t mention “the algorithm”

On the search experience front, there is just too little differentiation of the Yahoo and Google search experience. Some people think that maybe an OK play if you just want to settle for trying to maintain your share as search player 3 through 6, and you believe users WANT a more consistent keyword focused search experience… That is the perceived AOL bet (outside of video). For the number two player, however, that is a scary place to be. Yahoo needs to take some risk here (not blind “bet the franchise” risk, but some form of champion challenger testing of a more transformative search experience, ranging anywhere from an editorial focus like Mahalo to a natural language experience like Powerset). Search today is flawed – anyone’s own usability tests reinforces that understanding. It is still fertile ground for a company of the scale of Yahoo. There is innovation happening by Yahoo in the space – the Yahoo Answers experience has been a big win – but even there I am starting to see lots more really low quality “answers” manifest themself. Don’t rest on your laurels. Apply more automated editorial control here, or the great long-tail knowledge base will get compromised pretty quickly. There is a role for some form of post-answer posting editorial control – figure a way to do it at scale by empowering high-scoring community members additional editorial rights by category, or use better algorithms to deal with things like how to weight single-answer submissions better – lots of them are of pretty low utility.

Yahoo has a great and unique asset in its namespace – the size of its explicitly identified users (garnered by circling so much of the web email business for years). Google isn’t there yet, but their thrusts in email, IM, payment schemes, etc., all serve to recognize the strategic importance for Google to be a primary explicit basis for identity on the web. The challenge for Yahoo is figuring out a more aggressive strategy to leverage that namespace beyond Yahoo owned-and-operated experiences. I see them WAY under-indexed here. I do like the idea manifested in the current mail beta to blur the lines between IM and mail for the broader Yahoo community, effectively making everyone a member of the Yahoo IM community (even though this is not really a namespace expansion strategy, but one of increased leverage within the Yahoo experience), but I hated to see the buddy list concept re-manifest itself. By default, the online status of everyone I communicate with via IM and mail should be visible to me, if I am a newcomer to instant messaging). Let the experienced users tweak/refine things. Also, let me see new communications events anywhere I am in Yahoo web properties, not just the home page.

Social networks are another way to expand the Yahoo namespace, and much has been written over the past several months on the need for Yahoo to buy their way in via MySpace or Facebook. I do think that at a 30x multiple for MySpace, it makes a great addition (not the 50x multiple being bandied about), and if I had a choice, MySpace is much more of a Yahoo-scale thought than Facebook. That said, the recent Rivals acquisition is a really nice US-focused acquisition at a very reasoned valuation. It is not of enough scale to move a dial, but is a great step while they ponder “mega” transactions. The challenge in all these social networking plays is coming up with a plan to get more value from the relationships beyond the low CPM ad revenue they currently obtain. Yahoo does have enough other assets to make a recirculation strategy to higher CPM locations/properties a reality. None of these social network acquisitions can be justified using any traditional metric, but if you don’t dive in, they’ll either trade away to a rival with a hyper-valued currency, or they’ll do an ad deal to the highest bidder (in both cases, that has historically meant Google, but now I would add Microsoft to that mix – they are writing some pretty huge checks of late). We’ll certainly see more M&A by Yahoo here, even if the top two properties trade away from them.

On the mobile front , Yahoo has done some aggressive work with Yahoo Go, and 17 months after the original announcement by Terry S. at CES 2006, it is a valiant example at an integrated experience for feature phone users. I use the bits – there is goodness in them – but I find myself using dedicated email and mapping apps from Google more. I am not sure what drove me there. The email experience within Yahoo Go is good. One major differentiator might be the aggregation of inboxes I can get from the Google mail experience for free. Yahoo could and should do the same (heck, that was Oddpost’s lead value proposition at one point). On mapping and local search, I don’t think the Yahoo bits are on par with Google’s – that’s an important sub-element of fixing the search value proposition. Also, there is not a lot of thought leadership yet on testing of mobile advertising within the experience, beyond non-actionable micro-banner ads and the usual sponsored links in the search experience. I would be fascinated to see the usage stats for Yahoo Go, and what’s been learned to date. I do think the over-the-top distribution play was the right way to go – I wonder if that change came as a result of assessing the effectiveness of their prior Cingular cross promotion deal… As I mentioned in an earlier post, mobile may be the right thrust in the big emerging markets for the major players, and Yahoo certainly has the assets to make a much more compelling mobile experience for these markets a reality. Update:  have downloaded the just released Yahoo Go 2.0 – I like some of the cosmetic improvements, and mapping seems improved.  Performance a bit slow, but I like what I see in the first 20 minutes of hands on use.

Net net, I am a fan of Yahoo, and the quick exit to a private equity player envisioned by some is a misplaced thought, in my opinion. I don’t think you reengage a founder to be a steady pair of hands to navigate a transaction. I think it is much more of a statement of a need to get back to the roots of the company, and be an aggressor once again. It will be interesting to see what the next few months hold for them.