Yahoo tightens staff quality in India
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Yahoo has trimmed some staff in India as part of an exercise to improve the quality of its research and development (R&amp;D) team in the country. The company has removed less than 5 percent of staff after they failed in a performance appraisal, according to an informed source. Yahoo employs 1,500 staff in India in R&amp;D and its sales and marketing operations.However, the company continues to hire more staff in India. While declining to confirm the staff cuts, a spokeswoman at Yahoo said Thursday that the company has doubled staff in India each year, and is likely to do so this year as well. &quot;We continue to build a high performance culture in India,&quot; she said.IBM&#160;and Indian outsourcer Tata Consultancy Services have also&#160;trimmed under-performing staff in India, although both have said that the staff cuts are routine annual exercises to weed out under-performing staff. As staff costs in India increase because of shortage and competition, companies may be getting a lot tighter on quality, according to some analysts.Yahoo announced in January&#160;plans to let go about 1,000 of its global staff&#160;in February.
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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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Yahoo's $350 million purchase shows commitment to communications services as  company redefines its place in the market, says exec.
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I.B.M. has introduced new procedures to evaluate its staff in India with an eye to improving quality, with staff that donât make the grade being asked to leave.
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YAHOO chief Terry Semel has been put on notice by shareholders that he must improve his performance if he wants to keep the lucrative job.
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Yahoo hired Hilary Schneider, a former Knight Ridder executive to oversee the companyÂs classifieds, travel and shopping sites.
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Terry S. Semel, Yahooâs chief executive, is facing mounting questions about internal morale problems.
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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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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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Editor&#39;s Summary: Google is searching India -- for white collar IT workers. Google gurus Sergey Brin and Larry Page are touring cities -- including hi-tech hubs Bangalore and Hyderabad -- looking to hire engineers and online sales and support workers.
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(InfoWorld) - YahooÂ has introduced portals in India in seven local languages, to cater to the hundreds of millions of Indians expected to come online in the next few years. With its English language portal in India, Yahoo can only address up to about 30 million users who are comfortable with English, George Zacharias, managing director of Yahoo India told reporters Thursday in Bangalore. About 85 percent of Indiaâs approximately 30 million online users now use at least one of Yahooâs services, according to Zacharias. Yahoo expects that the number of Indian Internet users will increase to 300 million to 400 million people over the next five years if there are applications in the local languages, and Internet access is improved. Indiaâs mobile phone users are also emerging as important Internet users, Zacharias said. Yahoo has introduced plug-in modules to its instant messenger, which allows users to chat in nine different regional languages and scripts. In the next quarter, the company is also introducing Indian languages versions of its e-mail service. "One of the first applications that a person looks for online is e-mail,â Zacharias said. Yahoo also plans to eventually add discussion groups, blogs, bulletin boards and other services to its Indian languages portals. The news and other content on these portals will be tailored to the requirements of various linguistic groups. A number of Internet companies are targeting Indiaâs online users with very specific products and services. The revenue opportunity from advertising is however not yet very large. Online advertising in India was about $50 million last year, as compared to close to $1 billion for television, but it is growing very fast, Zacharias said. The Indian language portals will be particularly attractive in second-tier cities where users are more comfortable using the local language, even if they know English. These are also cities with a growing middle class with significant disposable incomes, Zacharias said. A lot of advertisers would like to reach this audience, he added.
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FINANCIAL news and information giant Reuters announced it would shift 50 per cent of its data operations to India and add 860 workers by the end of next year.
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Yahoo Inc.  on Tuesday announced a reorganization that marks Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker as a likely successor to the current CEO and simplifies the Internet media company's structure.
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Yahoo Inc.  on Tuesday announced a reorganization that marks Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker as a potential successor as CEO and simplifies its structure as it battles faster-growing rival Google.
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Internet powerhouse Yahoo has given its popular Web site a facelift to highlight some of the features that the company has been improving during the past year.
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Bill Wise of Media Post has put together a thoughtful review of Yahoo&#8217;s reorganization. I had heard a couple of people referring to the Yahoo Reorg as a negative for the Yahoo company and search industry.  I never really understood where they were coming from, nor could they back it up. Seems that there is [...]
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Chennai: Internet major Yahoo Inc will own a 25-member high-skilled software professional team in Chennai, after it acquired US-based Stata Labs.