????之前的舉措已經讓員工憂心忡忡，也讓互聯網同行敬而遠之，但湯普森似乎還嫌這些不夠，又做好了跟維權投資者第三點基金投資公司（Third Point）爭奪代理權的準備。自稱雅虎“最大外部股東”的第三點公司希望雅虎改組董事會，解決數年以來雅虎股東和董事會之間的矛盾。

????2月份，湯普森的觀點讓廣告業巨頭埃培智公司（Interpublic）同樣感到不安。廣告技術歷來是雅虎核心市場的一部分。如果湯普森以另外的一種激進方案出售雅虎廣告技術平臺，可能并不會有太大影響。但湯普森表示，未來的增長點在于雅虎業務中的“數據庫資源”。他認為，這些資源對于新產品和服務來說是“可以利用的”。.

????這一切都讓湯普森領導下的雅虎公司糟糕透頂。但他的瘋狂背后或許自有一番道理。爭議終究會被人們逐漸淡忘。裁員對員工來說肯定難以接受，但硅谷正面臨人才短缺的問題。專利戰或許很難看，但并不是什么稀罕事，人們的記憶也會很快淡去（直到上周以前，大多數人都已經忘了，早在2004年Google公司公開上市之前，雅虎就對Google開展過類似的專利爭奪戰。）

????如果湯普森大膽激進，不擇手段的舉措的確能夠扭轉雅虎局勢，所有爭議都將最終平息。這樣做要承擔很大的風險，但它也可能是雅虎東山再起的絕佳機會。巴爾茨和楊致遠曾經費勁九牛二虎之力，期望從逐步衰退的廣告業務中獲得利潤增長，這幾乎跟臨終護理一樣回天乏術。讓雅虎重回互聯網前沿的任務依然難以實現，但這種斗爭精神起碼帶來了一線生機。

????雅虎公司扭轉頹勢的關鍵在于，湯普森開始將重點放在消費者數據和分析業務上，以此來取代逐漸衰落的展示廣告業務。進入Facebook時代，跟蹤消費者網上行為已經成為了制勝的秘訣。但這條路布滿了隱私權的陷阱，畢竟，對于個人信息被利用，人們的態度越來越謹慎。

????因此，雅虎對“大數據”（Big Data）的投入也許能拯救公司，也可能會帶來滅頂之災。雅虎本月的舉措已經引發眾怒，但尚未波及消費者。但是，如果雅虎在利用用戶數據方面過于激進，最終可能會讓消費者也避之唯恐不及。如果連消費者也選擇了放棄，雅虎就徹底玩完了。

????譯者：李玫曉/汪皓

????As if distressing employees and alienating peers wasn't enough, Thompson is also gearing up for a proxy battle with activist investor Third Point, which wants new directors on the company's board. Third Point, which calls itself Yahoo's "largest outside owner," wants to tap into several years of shareholder frustration with Yahoo's board.

????And in February, comments from Thompson upset Interpublic, a major advertiser. That may not matter if Thompson follows through on another radical plan to sell off pieces of Yahoo's advertising technology, part of its historically core market. Thompson has said he sees future growth in the "wealth of data" in Yahoo's businesses, which he called "exploitable" for new products and services.

????All of this is making Yahoo under Thompson look very bad indeed. But there may be a method to his madness. Controversies blow over. Layoffs are always traumatic for workers, but Silicon Valley is facing a shortage of talent. Patent battles can get ugly, but they are so common the memory of them soon passes (Until last week, most people had forgotten that Yahoo held Google over a similar patent barrel before its 2004 IPO).

????If Thompson's bold, no-holds-barred approach turns Yahoo around, all these controversies will be forgotten. It's a huge risk to take, but it may just be Yahoo's best chance. In the end, the exhausting work of Bartz and Jerry Yang to extract growth from an aging ad business amounted to nothing more than hospice care. Returning Yahoo to the forefront of the web is still an unlikely outcome, but the new fighting spirit at least gives it an outside chance.

????The key to any Yahoo turnaround lies in Thompson's goal of supplanting a fading display-ad business with a new focus on customer data and analytics. In the age of Facebook, tracking users' behavior on the web is the real secret to success. But it's a road filled with privacy landmines. People are growing wary about having their personal data exploited.

????That's why Yahoo's push into "big data" could save it, or irreparably hurt it. If Yahoo is too aggressive in exploiting its user data, it could end up alienating the one constituency it hasn't angered this month: its customers. If they abandon Yahoo, the show is over.