西部落：雅虎CEO访谈（在线收听）

Terry S.Semel，Chairman & CEO, Yahoo!,Inc

Terry Semel capped a long career at Warner Bros. He cleared the Bugs out of Yahoo! and solidified its stature as the Web's No. 1 information portal.

Terry Semel walked into Yahoo six years ago as an outsider.

"When you came to Yahoo, you didn't know much about that technology, is that right?"

"That's very true, very true. But I knew about business, and Yahoo is also a business."

Today the former Hollywood mogul knows a little more the crucial technology behind yahoo like this server farm at the company's headquarters.

"If you're collecting things like mail or photos, and others. They are stored on these servers."

An accountant by training and the product of Brooklyn and Queens, Semel says his mother groomed him for leadership.

"I had a very supportive mother who would often say you know you could do it,you could do anything,you know, you could be the president of United States. And of coures I came home with bad grades and she said don't let that bother you."

Semel honed his deal-making skills over more than 30 years at Warner Brothers. In fact Hollywood had a name for it, getting Semelized. He and co-CEO Bob Daly transformed the studios into a diverse media company growing annual revenues from less than a billion dollars to nearly 11 billion dollars during their reign. After leaving Warner Brothers in 1999,Semel met Jerry Yang,one of the co-founders of Yahoo while attending a conference and the two became friends.

One day online he said "would you like to be our CEO,our CEO has left". I said no, I'm really not really interested in a job,I don't really want to work for people. And I went home and I thought about it for a few days and I thought that's exactly what I'd like to do.

Yahoo was founded by Yang and David Filo when the two was still students at Stanford. The company came to symbolize the Internet counter-culture of the late 90s, even down to its name.

"Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle."

Yahoo was flying high when the Internet bubble burst, the company lost 93 million dollars in 2001. After then CEO Tim Koogle stepped down, Yang convinced the board to hire Semel. Silicon Valley was a big adjustment for an executive more accustomed to power lunches and Hollywood limelight. But Semel was there to figure out how Yahoo could make money and he made believers of his younger colleagues. The new business model boosted Yahoo's bottom line almost immediately.

"And then 2003 2004 recorded profits, you know, nobody could say enough good things about Terry Semel."

"Right, then 2005 and 6 came and they said wow, what's happening."

What happened was google, which became a powerful competitor after going public in 2004.

"Google came from virtually nowhere to dominate lucrative search advertising. And lately it has been beating Terry Semel at his own game--deal-making, outbidding Yahoo for some key acquisitions like YouTube."

Despite losing out on YouTube and other sites, Yahoo is still by far the most popular website on the Internet. But google is the most profitable.

"This is personal searching for American Idol"

Yahoo is trying to catch up in search advertising with a project called Panama and the stakes are high.

"The problem is that Google just has some so much momentum, so much money that anything next to them looks kind of pale. And google itself is also expanding into all kinds of things that Yahoo is already doing too."

Some think Yahoo may need to partner with someone, perhaps Microsoft to get ahead. But Semel with years of corporate ups and downs under his belt is keeping his eye on the long term.

"What's been the best part about coming to Yahoo and Silicon Valley?"

"Well, it's learning, and basically, helping to change the world."

Changing the world by connecting millions of people, one click at a time.

In Sunnyvale California, I'm Ceci Rodgers for CEO exchange.