A brutally frank memo by Brad Garlinghouse, a Yahoo SVP, calling on management to dump peripheral activities, has leaked out. It adds to the pressure on Terry Semel's management team to raise its game in the competition with Google, and a new host of internet media startups. With hedge funds investing in the company in the expectation of a change in strategy, or a merger, and internal dissent breaking out into the open, the status quo is becoming untenable. The Journal has the whole memo. But here's the key passage: I've heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular.

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