Jajah Says Yahoo

With the possible merger of Yahoo with Microsoft this agreement between Jajah and Yahoo can be very good, or much to do about nothing. But for now its all very good for Jajah and they deserve the credit for being the number one minute stealer, taking advantage of an opportunity when everyone has their eyes elsewhere. Well done.

Here are the facts as I see it:

Jajah picks up the inbound and outbound call management for Yahoo voice, which has not really set the world on fire. Isn't that why Yahoo bought Dialpad? Score lots of money to Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet. Yahoo, doesn't score any points.

Jeff Bonforte has left Yahoo for XOBNI. Reportedly Microsoft wants to buy XOBNI. Jeff developed Yahoo voice with the help of some very talented developers. He also developed the guts of GizmoProject for SIPPhone. Candidly, since Jeff left Gizmo the product hasn't been as stable, but it still works. Score one for Jeff, nothing for Yahoo as they let a talented whirling dirvish like Rockstar slip away.

Brad Garlinghouse is still there at Yahoo trying to help clean up the sticky situation brought on by the Peanut Butter Manifesto (and things are showing he was right). So the two guiding lights who moved Yahoo big time into voice are not paying any attention. Give Brad some Skippy.

Now this is where you have to really wonder whose paying attention to what at Yahoo. AT&T and Verizon are/were big parts of the Yahoo on-ramp strategy. This Jajah relationship can't exactly appeal to them given how may DSL customers they drive to Yahoo as their home page. Also since Yahoo powers AT&T's portal for WiFi with its ad engine, one has to wonder if the right hand at Yahoo knows what the left hand is doing.

So Jajah shows off smarts in landing a deal that has lots of marquee value, will enable Yahoo to not be in the phone infrastructure business and likely has some community and ad delivery value for them.

Score Jajah 10, Yahoo 0.