Yahoo's Jeff Weiner: Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend?

Interesting interview at Web 2.0 Expo between John Battelle and Jeff Weiner, Yahoo Exec & EVP Search.

After discussing Yahoo's future strategy given Google's recent successes & acquisitions of YouTube & DoubleClick (and Yahoo's non-acquisition of Facebook), John then asked a question about Microsoft.  Weiner said nothing specific about a deal or partnership, yet appeared to state a position of greater interest from Yahoo to any future Microsoft approaches.

Hmmm.  That's a new attitude for Yahoo towards Microsoft, compared to previous responses.

Watch this space.

Comments

[Adam]

Can you point towards any good summaries of the talk between Jeff and John online?

[Adam]

Here's the best I've found so far:

http://tinyurl.com/2h5rl4

[Dave]

there's also a clip by Cnet here.

[daveschappell]

I also was shocked by the directness of his reply. It had me thinking that this was a clear case of signaling. If he had been talking about pricing, the DOJ (or whatever department is responsible for said activity) would have rapidly swooped in to blunt price collusion!

I was really impressed with Jeff -- I found myself sitting there thinking, "that guy's braining really works". I bet that he's an inspiring leader. It was also a great reminder that Yahoo!'s not the lumbering beast that we sometimes think, just as Microsoft probably isn't "dead" just yet.

Interesting times, indeed...