It was clear that Yahoo never planned on being a search company when they passed on buying Google. And you're definitely right: Yahoo operates much better as a destination site. But in terms of media creation, Terry Semel and his Hollywood crew was brought on for that and it was just a waste, treading waters, not grabbing YouTube, not grabbing Facebook, flubbed on creating a better search ad product, etc.
They should have just worked it out with AOL last year.