Icahn the Terrible, and his effort to eviscerate Yahoo

Much like the essence of yesterday's Spike Lee post, Carl Icahn's recent fight with Yahoo is also an exercise in holding up a magnifying glass to manufactured issues that only he (and the coalition he manages to build with his passionate rhetoric) cares about; but both Lee and Icahn forgot to, for the sake of full disclosure, mention that the issues they place under the magnifying glass are smaller than they appear.

It's amazing how someone like Carl Icahn can become an expert on the inner workings of a company the moment he owns more than 1% of the company's stock. What's his secret? Did he spend part of his mountain of cash on Kevin Trudeau's Mega Memory, and actually manage to get some sort of benefit from it? Was it Focus Factor? Was it one of those learn-while-you-sleep programs? Whatever the case may be; he now believes he can apply his experience with tobacco conglomerates, real estate, airlines, water softeners, cosmetics, and hotels to an internet company known as Yahoo.

What Icahn refuses to acknowledge (or, worse, isn't aware of) is that Yahoo is far different from the vast majority of the companies he has past experience with. Yahoo provides more of a service than a product, and this service relies heavily on brand identity and customer loyalty; both of which would die a painful death at the hands of Microsoft. Yahoo would undoubtedly be gutted, and if this happened Google's position would only be enhanced as Yahoo's users flocked there--rather than to Microsoft--for searches and other services.

I'm sure Jerry Yang is well aware of this, and is not interested in seeing the company he co-founded in 1994 (and built over more than a decade) thrown under the bus to placate an opportunistic investor. Yang may actually be more loyal to Yahoo's customer base than he is to the machinations of corporate raiders, and I think Icahn is rendered vicious by this proverbial thorn in his paw.

Icahn has apparently also never heard of a poison pill, as he's been complaining about such provisions in Yahoo's internal policies as "inappropriate". Makes one wonder how this man ever managed to gather billions of dollars in the first place. This is surely either feigned ignorance, or the equivalent of a poker bluff.