What must Yahoo do? In the last year its founder chief executive was ousted in favour of cost-cutting kudos. It agreed to outsource the data-crunching technological side of search to Microsoft. And last week the group inundated investors with facts designed to demonstrate the potential of Yahoo’s advertising business. Yet its shares have been left behind in the tech rally, ending the week at the same price that they started May.

The simple answer is that Yahoo must grow. Opportunities abound – for instance three-quarters of Yahoo’s 600m users are outside the US, while the group makes only 27 per cent of revenues internationally – but management were largely quiet on strategy to expand sales. Focus was instead on plans to save money by correcting past mistakes. Soon its homepages will all be based on the same software, instead of having 33 types of computer code running them. Operating margins of 6 per cent this year are forecast to rise to 15-20 per cent by 2012.