The product is heavily informed by the ancillary activity that goes on to support it, including the marketing materials. It's called execution. You need an arbiter at the end of the chain who can say, "This isn't good enough." Otherwise, you run the risk of doing something poorly, which is embarrassing and damages the overall brand.
Yahoo, in particular, should be treating its brand very delicately right now.
As it is this looks as though you're trying to ride on the media buzz generated by the product launch.
Of course Yahoo needs to work on their processes with respect to product definition and execution. That's the whole reason they're dying in the first place.
The just say "No." appears to be addressed to the readers of your post, and to all of the people at Yahoo! inclusive.
But they already gave the indication that they stand behind their product, after all they launched it. If you're going to make a point why they should have said "No." in the first place then you should stick to specifics about the product. After all, if you've already decided that some of the good stuff from the concept will make it into future browsers you are actually saying it is not all bad. And then maybe you should be specific about those things, both good and bad as well.
That would make it a bit easier to say why people should say "No.". Logos, ads and presentation are not a good reason to say "No." to any product.
My point with this post was to highlight the importance of people within an organization like Yahoo having the ability to veto product launches when the line hasn't been crossed. Hundreds of people were involved with Axis, no doubt, and many of them I am sure experienced the same pain that you did when you watched the ad. This is not about the product, per se. It's about the state of the product right now, and the ability of the designers/engineers to make great stuff.
And to attack the marketing around the launch is something that shows a lot about yahoo as a company but does not say anything about the product (it could be brilliant, for all I know).
All the really good people left Yahoo! long ago, so that's why there is nobody there with the cojones to say 'No.', or the clout to make it stick.
But in spite of that this product apparently still has some good elements in it and that alone should be cause for surprise. To me that is a positive thing, even if they messed up everything else around it because I had long ago given up on even that being possible.
The rest is just 'business as usual'.
You know what, Its always that the 'real' people leave a company in crisis 'long ago'.
There have been many examples when the 'unreal' people manage to turn the company around. Chrysler, IBM, Apple have all seen turn around with such people.
The essential premise is to say that the product is flawed, archaic and intrusive. It's based off of a "toolbar" premise that evolving technology has eclipsed years ago.
Then he talks about how the investment in what are also bad promotions, marketing and branding into this effort are all wasted too. They are also wasted in a time where it's incredibly important that Yahoo get itself back together.
He's not saying that the logos are the reasons why it's bad. He's just saying that the logos don't make up for a bad product. Further adding that the investment in logos and promotions for a bad product exponentially deepen the wasted effort into a bad product. Even worse, all of these promotions are bad in and of themselves.
This isn't an either-or (that its bad because of promotions or bad because of product) but an all-encompassing poor effort in execution on Yahoo's part. The concluding question is why the hell didn't anyone stop this.
* Made some minor edits to clarify my post.
Oh sorry, the logo is so intrinsically evil that no true Scotsman would ever allow a product with it to be released. Riiight....