For Yahoo Tech Chief, It's Time to Slow Down SHAKERS MARKETPLACE By Bloomberg
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By Jonathan Thaw  Yahoo said Thursday that its chief technology officer, Farzad Nazem, resigned to spend more time with family. Nazem is to leave on June 8, Yahoo said in a regulatory filing.
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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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A week after The New York Times published a blistering account of Yahoo's recent travails, the company's charismatic senior vice president, Brad Garlinghouse, wrote a company memo calling for a dramatic corporate reorganization, including a headcount reduction of as much as 20%.
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The New York Stock Exchange took another step today toward a hybrid trading system. But that doesn't mean the exchange will be losing its floor traders anytime soon, says  NYSE CTO Steve Rubinow.
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Yahoo will reorganize into three new units, as part of a shake-up that will see Chief Operating Officer Dan Rosensweig leave the company, Yahoo said Tuesday.
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YAHOO co-founder Jerry Yang today took over as chief executive following the ousting of Terry Semel.   Semel quit last night after attracting increasing investor wrath as Yahoo lags behind arch-rival Google by almost all measures.
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The Yahoo bid is a dramatic statement from Microsoft, a company that delayed acknowledging the importance of emerging Web business models for so long.
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By Miguel Helft  When Yahoo hired Terry Semel as its chief executive in the midst of the dot-com implosion in 2001, it became a bit of an oddity in Silicon Valley: a technology company run by a Hollywood executive.
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Mike Arrington is doing a great job of laying out the options for Yahoo wrt Microsoft's offer to buy them out. He's written two pieces that helped put it together for me. Mike clearly has great sources in the investment banking community and among potential buyers of Yahoo, and is actively talking with them. He's got a business lawyer's mind and, as you know I'm sure, he's spent the last few years immersed in web applications.  Bottom-line: Yahoo's three choices are: 1. Tough it out alone. 2. Sell advertising rights to Google. 3. Accept Microsoft's offer.  Mike argues that option 1 would result in shareholder lawsuits and in the end would get Yahoo nowhere because they'd end up selling to Microsoft eventually. Option 2 would enable them to pay a major cash dividend to their shareholders, making up for the lost windfall coming from Microsoft's offer. Options 2 and 3 have the risk of being rejected by government regulators.  Now, as a member of Yahoo's developer community, and generally a respector of Yahoo (is that a word) -- I say take the deal. I don't think Yahoo has ever had leadership that has been up to navigating the treacherous waters of tech industry economics and politics. At least with the Microsoft acquisition they would get one -- Ray Ozzie. He's a guy you can sit across the table from and plot something out and he can deliver. I've had many good meetings with Yahoo people, but rarely have they resulted in action. From my own selfish point of view, Microsoft owning Yahoo might mean that Ray makes more trips to the Bay Area (figuratively) and when he sits down, we can talk about new open interfaces and developer programs for Yahoo properties. I've read most of the commentary on the Yahoo deal, and the other piece that made an impression was Mark Cuban's. He says that Yahoo should accept the Microsoft deal because it would give them the breathing room they need re Wall Street. He argues that the market has always allowed Microsoft to sink resources into developing markets, and that's exactly what Yahoo needs to become the organization that it has been trying to be. Instead, the market treats Yahoo as a comp to Google, but Yahoo doesn't have the economics of Google, so that's, long-term, a losing battle.  There's one more reason I think Yahoo should sell to Microsoft -- the fatigue of the people. The company has been wobbly too long. If they don't take the Microsoft offer it's going to be a long wobbly decline and the shareholders will be right to be angry. Here's their chance to get out, it's time, so just do it.
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Buying, selling, jumping, and dumping -- it's been a busy week in technology. And like the news, this quiz has Yahoo all over it. Can you acquire a perfect score? It's harder than it looks. Award yourself 10 points for each correct answer (sorry, no partials this time). Ready? Then get cracking.1. It turns out Yahoo isn't emotionally unavailable, it's just playing hard to get. What did Yahoo hint would help Microsoft close the deal?a. A seat on the Microsoft board for Jerry Yang b. $40 a share c. Retaining Yahoo brands (don't forget the exclamation point!) d. A restraining order keeping Steve Ballmer 800 miles from SunnyvaleTake the InfoWorld news quiz
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Jerry Yang can talk tech better than his stodgy predecessor. Could that mean more deals?
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Steven Vaughan-Nichols suggests maybe it&#39;s time for Sun Microsystems to stop making announcements and focus on actually making technology.
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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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New York Post says Yahoo's board is starting to split, with some independent directors sensing that CEO Jerry Yang is viewing the bid too emotionally.
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After Jerry Yang and Sue Deckerâs conference call on Tuesday, Yahooâs shares plunged. Now, the companyâs customers and employees are left to wonder whatâs next.
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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 looked to new leadership in its battle against Google. It was a bad week for automakers. Home Depot downsized by a unit, and Wal-Mart introduced products and services for the unbanked.