I think a lot of people have been willing to give Semel and the whole "Yahoo as a media company" so much space over the years because of its sheer size. SEM only got mainstream attention in the past 2 years, so now everyone realizes what many of us realized since 2002: Overture was a shambles.-- Andrew Goodman (in the comments)What some of us formerly speculated about, has become more obvious: Semel, and others who shy away from technology, don't add value to a company like Yahoo. Platform and technology issues aren't trivial, obviously. Hands must be gotten dirty, even in the top jobs.
Andrew's previous comments on media vs. technology, from 2004, were prescient.