12. Ignore #11 because it's dismissive and ignorant of the important components required to run a company that aren't directly related to customers or users.

Really. The author is a former Y! employee who's experienced firsthand what he thinks are a lot of the reasons behind the company's decline, and you step in with a snarky one-liner that basically says everything he's written is invalid.

Normally I'd agree with you, however I think OP has a good (implied) point that the underlying structures and culture need serious overhaul before any real product work can be done.

Yup. I'm hoping by hiring the best engineers/designers/etc and putting together great product teams, you implicitly get people who care about users.

"Recently exited a short stint" - That seems like one step above "Stayed in a Holiday Inn last night" but not really enough to do more than give us a superficial insight into the issues.

"A Yahoo app on every home screen" sounds like a pretty user-oriented goal, regardless of the words it uses.

Actually, one of the conflicts I felt while I was at yahoo related to the fact that the customers aren't the same people as the users. "Customers" at yahoo are the advertisers, and they're the ones who generate the revenue. "Users" are just the eyeballs looking at the ads. When business is good, there's little conflict, which is why this isn't a big deal for Facebook or google. But when business falters, advertisers start making demands that ultimately compromise the user experience. Bigger, more prominent ads make the customers happy, and may generate more short-term revenue, but they ultimately drive users away. I feel like yahoo is in the middle of this right now, and I'm not sure what they can do to appeal to their users and their customers simultaneously.