Yahoo Inc. to Reorganize Management
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SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Trying to better compete with rivals Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc.'s president announced in a staff memo Wednesday its plans to reorganize the company's leadership.
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Yahoo execs plan powwow and to consolidate entertainment businesses.
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Yahoo is widely expected  to undertake significant layoffs this week and dump several  underperforming businesses as the struggling portal continues  to reorganize its business operations.
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U.S. stock futures pointed to a flat  market opening on Wednesday, with Yahoo Inc.  likely to  rise after it announced a reorganization of its management  structure.
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Yahoo Inc. is adopting severance plans to take effect if the Web portal is taken over by Microsoft Corp.
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By Michael Liedtke  Yahoo Inc. is tackling its most difficult challenge since the dot- com bust with sweeping organizational changes aimed at cleaning up a mess of the Internet icon's own making.
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Yahoo plans to lay off hundreds of employees to increase profitability, prop up its deflated stock price and focus on a smaller number of key areas, people close to the company said.
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It's very clear now that one of Yahoo's principal goals in this latest reorganization, led by once-and-future CEO Jerry Yang and newly elevated President Susan Decker, is to distinguish itself from Google rather than catch up to it.
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Yahoo said Sunday that Wenda Harris Millard, its longtime chief sales officer, is leaving amid a reorganization of Yahooâs sales team.
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The merger-minded software giant will likely want to keep Yahoo execs in a host of areas, including online ads, social media and Web search.
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Microsoft confirmed&#160;a number of high-level executive changes, moves that could be designed to better position the company to digest an acquisition of Yahoo, an analyst said.In addition to a number of executive promotions, Microsoft announced that Bill Veghte, senior vice president of the Online Services and Windows Business Group; Satya Nadella, senior vice president, Search, Portals and Advertising Group; and Brian McAndrews, senior vice president of Microsoft&#39;s Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group, are all taking on new responsibilities in running Microsoft&#39;s online services, including Windows Live, Search, and MSN.Microsoft may be positioning Nadella to take on the responsibility of the technical integration of Yahoo if the acquisition happens, said Rob Helm, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft. &quot;Microsoft is anticipating a shift in its online strategy around the purchase of Yahoo, which means, among other things, that they&#39;re replacing people running the old strategy,&quot; he said.If Nadella is being brought in to integrate Yahoo into Microsoft, he doesn&#39;t have the best track record, said Helm. He was the head of the Microsoft Dynamics unit and was charged with integrating a couple of other acquisitions, including Great Plains. &quot;On his watch, relatively little happened in the way of successful integration,&quot; said Helm. However, Nadella had the post for just a year, so perhaps he didn&#39;t have the opportunity to do more, he said.Steve Berkowitz, senior vice president of the Online Services Group, is moving out of a role in Microsoft&#39;s online group. He&#39;ll step down from his position in August, Microsoft said. He plans to stay with the company, but Microsoft did not say in what capacity.Despite these positioning moves, the Yahoo deal is still uncertain, Helm said. &quot;It&#39;s still up in the air, though it seems unlikely that Microsoft would walk away after a bid like this,&quot; he said.Microsoft also said that Andy Lees, who leads marketing for the Server and Tools Marketing and Solutions group, will take over for Pieter Knook as senior vice president of the Mobile Communications Business. Word of Knook&#39;s departure surfaced on Thursday with an announcement from Vodafone that he&#39;d joined the mobile operator.Lees&#39; appointment, as someone with a marketing background, seems to follow a shift in the mobile group toward a focus on consumers, Helm said. Microsoft recently announced plans to buy Danger, a youth-focused mobile software company, and appointed a new marketing executive to target consumers. Pressure from the iPhone, which has done remarkably well in a very brief time, could be driving the shift in strategy for the mobile group at Microsoft, Helm said.Other announcements from Microsoft include news that Brad Brooks will take over for Michael Sievert, who is leaving the company, as corporate vice president of Windows Consumer Product Marketing. Steve Guggenheimer will become corporate vice president of the Original Equipment Manufacturer Division, moving on from a marketing position with Microsoft&#39;s Application Platform effort.
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AOL will reorganize its business   divisions to simplify its structure as it focuses on boosting   Internet advertising sales globally, according to a memorandum   sent to employees on Wednesday.
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Terry Semel is stepping down as Yahoo&#39;s non-executive chairman, six months after handing over his CEO title to Jerry Yang.Semel is leaving the board effective immediately, Yahoo announced Thursday. He will be replaced as non-executive chairman by another board member, Roy Bostock, the company said.Semel was chairman and CEO of Yahoo for six years until he was replaced in a management shuffle last June. Yang, one of Yahoo&#39;s co-founders, was made CEO, and Semel was demoted to non-executive chairman.As CEO, Semel helped to build Yahoo&#39;s audience from 170 million to more than 500 million users. But he was also blamed for missteps that allowed Google to build a commanding lead in online search and advertising, prompting last year&#39;s reorganization.&quot;With the Company moving forward under new leadership, I believe this is an appropriate time for me to step down from the board,&quot; Semel said in the statement.He approached the board several months ago about leaving once a replacement could be found, Yahoo said.Bostock has a long history in the advertising industry, &quot;an area that is more important than ever to Yahoo&#39;s business and our long term success,&quot; the company said.On Tuesday&#160;Yahoo reported that net income for its fourth quarter declined&#160;to $206 million, from $269 million a year earlier. It also announced plans to lay off about 1,000 staff.Semel&#39;s departure from the board appears to mark the end of his tenure at Yahoo. Yang thanked him for &quot;his many contributions to Yahoo over the years&#160;-- and for helping to lay a firm foundation for future success and improved financial performance.&#8221;Bostock has been a board member at Yahoo since May 2003 and was elected unanimously by the board to replace Semel. From 1990 to 2000 he was chairman and CEO of D&#39;Arcy Masius Benton &amp; Bowles, and its successor advertising company The MacManus Group.
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(InfoWorld) - Industry observers are nodding in agreement at a scathing internal memo that calls for a major reorganization of Yahoo Inc. at a time when many say the Web portal has lost its edge and trails competitors large and small alike. Yahoo must stop spreading a thin layer of "peanut butter" across myriad opportunities and instead focus on key areas, improve upper-management accountability and reorganize, including an up to 20 percent headcount reduction, wrote Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo's senior vice president of communications and communities. "The basic idea is very much on the mark and I'd expect Yahoo would try to respond and become more focused," says financial analyst Clayton Moran, a senior vice president at Stanford Group Company. However, he cautions that sharpening its focus will not be easy, given the portal's current structure. The confidential memo, which The Wall Street Journal obtained and posted on its Web site, says Yahoo lacks "a focused, cohesive vision" that has made it "reactive" and eager to be "everything to everyone." By reactive, Garlinghouse may have been referring to how Yahoo has seen nimble startups like MySpace, later acquired by News Corp., and YouTube, recently snapped up by Google Inc., become leaders in areas like social networking and online video sharing. Meanwhile, Yahoo continues to trail Google in Internet search. "We agree with the memo's point that Yahoo needs to be more focused and differentiate itself and build a brand in certain categories, as opposed to being one portal for all categories," Moran says, adding that Yahoo should identify the next hot Internet trend and build a leadership position in it. For Gartner Inc. analyst Allen Weiner, Yahoo has become a victim of its own success. By nailing the all-in-one Web portal model in the 1990s, it became the dominant player in that market, but now it must adapt to the changing landscape. "Yahoo is by no means out of the game but the time is now to execute on a more tightly focused vision. That's what's missing. Garlinghouse is right in saying there are way too many people doing way too many things," Weiner says. The Wall Street Journal reported that Garlinghouse wrote the memo in October and circulated it among Yahoo's top executive brass. In response, Chief Operating Officer Dan Rosensweig appointed Garlinghouse to head a committee to study the memo's issues, the newspaper reported. Yahoo remains the world's most popular Web site, with 480.6 million unique visitors in October, according to comScore Networks Inc., but it has disappointed Wall Street with its financial performance in recent quarters. It has been seen as proactive in acquiring social media startups like the photo sharing site Flickr and the social bookmarking pioneer del.icio.us, two companies Garlinghouse uses as examples of overlapping services that Yahoo should consider consolidating. In addition to Flickr, the company has a similar service called Yahoo Photos, while Yahoo's MyWeb is identical in focus to del.icio.us. "We need to get the discussion going; change is needed and it is needed soon. We can be a stronger and faster company," Garlinghouse wrote. Asked for comment about the memo, a Yahoo spokeswoman provided a prepared statement via e-mail that says that during Yahoo's most recent earnings conference call, Chief Executive Officer Terry Semel said that the company is narrowing its focus on boosting search and graphical ad sales and on prioritizing social media, video and mobile. "We're moving forward aggressively on these priorities," she wrote. "The memo itself highlights that we have an open, collaborative culture and a senior management team that is intensely committed to helping Yahoo fulfill its potential as an Internet leader."
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Yahoo has promoted David Karnstedt to head of North American sales, continuing a company restructuring that began in December 2006.
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Yahoo Inc. on Monday replaced Chief Executive Terry Semel with its co-founder Jerry Yang, bowing to investor pressure as the Internet media company has fallen behind Web search leader Google Inc..
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In a sharply worded internal memo, Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo's senior vice president of communications and communities, said his company is spreading itself like "peanut butter" across too many opportunities and should be reorganized.