Jerry Yang
Happy Fifth Birthday to Yahoo! Search
Five years ago, Yahoo! stopped using Google-powered results and embarked on their own search product. It’s been one heck of a journey.
Yahoo! highlighted the following milestones on their blog:
- Opened search infrastructure and index to outside developers with BOSS.
- Opened search results page to outside innovation with SearchMonkey.
- Launched Search Assist, still the most sophisticated query assistance technology on the Web.
- Launched a suite of mobile search products including Yahoo! oneSearch.
- Acquired, grew, and improved Delicious, a social bookmarking tool.
- Launched Site Explorer to help site owners to manage their presence on Yahoo! Search.
- Protected users from potential viruses, spyware, and spam with SearchScan.
- Integrated music and video players directly on the search results page.
Many of the above things were rolled out over the past, tumultuous year that began with an unsolicited (and ultimately unsuccessful) acquisition attempt by Microsoft and ended with Jerry Yang stepping down as CEO and Autodesk Chairman Carol Bartz stepping in to lead the purple people.
Will she successfully guide them to achieve the following, future-thinking goals?
- Continuing to open search results page and infrastructure to improve search and encourage innovation in the industry.
- Focusing on detecting and responding better to query intent.
- Breaking the ten-blue-links paradigm by developing a richer, more adaptive search results page.
- Making it easier to conduct and share online research with Search Pad.
- Delivering a new and better advertising experience that improves relevance for users and ROI for advertisers.
I, for one, would love to see Yahoo! Search rise and take more search market share. I love Autodesk as a company (my husband is an AutoCAD programmer for a commerical kitchen hood company) and if anyone can bring a innovativeboost to Yahoo!, it’s Carol Bartz. Innovation, which is about the only way anyone will steal market share from Google, is always great for consumers.
Viva la Yahoo! and may the next 5 years be good to the Sunnyvale search engine.
UPDATE: Facebook Returns to Old Terms of Service
After the uproar over Facebook’s change in their Terms of Service, Zuckerberg and company have returned to the old TOS. This is mostly a huge misunderstanding and Facebook is still working on a new TOS.
Zuckerberg is like Jerry Yang – good with the coding and programming, not so great with the communication and leadership. Hopefully, Zuck will fix this before Facebook ends up like Yahoo. (Did I mention Microsoft has a stake in Facebook – oh and a search partnership?)
Jill Nash to Depart Yahoo; Scott Moore Heads to Microsoft
Chief communications officer Jill Nash is leaving Yahoo. I can’t say that I blame her. Dealing with the press during turbulent and ultimately failed Microsoft acquisition attempt plus dropping stocks plus Jerry Yang’s stepping down as CEO must have been exhausting.
Also, former Yahoo Scott Moore is headed back to Microsoft to run content efforts for the U.S. Moore left Yahoo last November. If you’d like to read about his back-and-forth career in Silicon Valley, read Swisher’s tabloid-esque piece here.
Did Yahoo President Sue Becker See New CEO As Snub?
Despite the suggestion by ValleyWag, that incoming Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz’s first job would be to fire President Sue Decker, seems Decker beat her to the punch by announcing her resignation.
Decker has overseen many of the few innovations and major changes at Yahoo during the past few years – as Terry Semel stood down to give Jerry Yang the CEO spot and their stock fell from the 30s to below 10. But, ValleyWag reports Decker was ambitious and “engineered a reorganization that drove out her chief rival, COO Dan Rosensweig, and then led a palace coup to drive out Hollywood movie mogul Terry Semel as CEO.”
Meanwhile, Chairman of the Board Roy Bostock stated ““The Board thanks Sue for her service as President, the important contributions she has made to Yahoo!’s development in a variety of roles over the past 8-1/2 years, and her willingness to work with Carol Bartz to ensure a smooth transition. We respect her decision to move on to other challenges and wish her only the best.”
The news of the new CEO and Decker leaving did little to impact the Yahoo stock price today.
Report: Carol Bartz Accepted Yahoo Offer to Become CEO
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Carol Bartz has accepted Yahoo’s offer to become their next CEO. I have no link at the moment. Just a breaking news headline:
Bartz is currently executive chairman of Autodesk, a design software company. She formerly was CEO of Autodesk and was an executive as Sun Microsystems. She currently serves on the boards of Cisco (with Jerry Yang) and Intel (with Sue Decker).
Yahoo! stock was on the rise in reaction to the news. At the time of this post, Yahoo was at $12.38.
Is Yahoo on the Verge of Naming Yang’s Replacement?
The Wall Street Journal today is reporting that a new Yahoo! CEO could be named as early as next week. Lately, the buzz has surrounded Autodesk executive chairman Carol Bartz.
Bartz previously was CEO of Autodesk from 1992 to 2006. She has also been an executive at Sun Microsystems.
She serves on the board of Cisco with current Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang and on the Intel board with current Yahoo! President Susan Decker.
Last November, Jerry Yang announced that he would be stepping down from his role as CEO. He will remain at the Sunnyvale search engine as Chief Yahoo!
Related Reading:
Yang Says Microsoft Deal is Best Bet for Yahoo
Yahoo Q3 2008 Earnings: It Ain’t Pretty
Jerry Yang’s Casual Note To Employees Thrown Overboard
The outgoing CEO and co-founder of Yahoo Jerry Yang seems to be taking the new round of layoffs rather casually, if his letter to them at Yahoo Anecdotal is any indication.
The entry titled “Tough times” was written in all lower case – written in a casual tone despite the seriousness of the occasion to those leaving. Obviously “saying goodbye to colleagues and friends is never easy” but perhaps it deserves more than what looks like a casual note jotted off in a hurry.
A sale of Yahoo at $31 may have led to as many layoffs, but the departing employees would have more money than the 4 months severance ValleyWag reports to fall back on. A sentence in the About page for Yahoo Anecdotal – though not directed at this situation – has a resonance I can’t get out of my head.
“Much as we’d love to help resolve your concern, support issues are way out of our realm.”
Combine that with the slides ValleyWag acquired for layoff instructions to managers and one sees the big business actions of this declining corporation.
The Twitters of the employees as they have been given the news and their friends reactions have made this day seem like an industry tragedy – which in the short term it definitely is. Hopefully though some of these people go on to create new companies and products that build on its continued future.
Ballmer on post-Yang Yahoo! Acquistion: What Part of No Did You Not Understand?
After news came that Jerry Yang would be stepping down as Yahoo!’s CEO, the immediate reaction by analysts, Wall Street, and your neighbor’s cat was: MICROSOFT ACQUISITION TIME!
But Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, is saying: Not so fast.
Ballmer has said time and again that Microsoft has moved on from the possibility of returning to the good ol’ days of negotiating a Yahoo! acquisition.
And while it’s tempting to think that he’s just waiting for that stock to drop to around $2-3 a share (hey, only $6-7 more to go!), consider this: Yahoo’s VP of Search Technology, Sean Suchter is leaving the Sunnyvale search engine. And I hope he likes rain and coffee, because rumor has it that he’s headed to Microsoft.
That rumor was reported by none other than Kara Swisher, who is pretty much never wrong. The only thing I’m wondering is: Where’s the noncompete agreement?
Amidst the rumors and denials, one thing is for sure. No matter how much Ballmer would like the speculation to end, it won’t.
Jerry Yang to Step Down as Yahoo! CEO
Yahoo! has announced that Jerry Yang will step down as CEO once his replacement has been found. Yang will remain on board as Chief Yahoo!
Yang became CEO in June 2007 at the request of the Board of Directors. Board Chairman Roy Bostock will lead the search for a new CEO. Here’s his official corporate-speak on the matter:
“Over the past year and a half, despite extraordinary challenges and distractions, Jerry Yang has led the repositioning of Yahoo! on an open platform model as well as the improved alignment of costs and revenues. Jerry and the Board have had an ongoing dialogue about succession timing, and we all agree that now is the right time to make the transition to a new CEO who can take the company to the next level. We are deeply grateful to Jerry for his many contributions as CEO over the past 18 months, and we are pleased that he plans to stay actively involved at Yahoo! as a key executive and member of the Board.”
Twitter Updates for 2008-11-07
links for 2008-11-06: YouTube Adds Search to Embeddable Videos Vanity 800 Phone Numbers Twitter Upd.. http://tinyurl.com/5mcm24 #
New Blog Post – Wordtracker Launches “Keyword Questions”: Wordtracker has launched “.. http://tinyurl.com/66rvys #
New Blog Post – Yang Says Microsoft Deal is Best Bet for Yahoo: Jerry Yang told atte.. http://tinyurl.com/6j7ec9 #
New Blog Post – YouTube Adds Search to [...]
![[image]http://kelsocartography.com/blog/](http://www.stumbleupon.com/to/2BKQpi/kelsocartography.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/the-world-according-to-ronald-reagan.jpg/t:4b224bb2b49f9;src:favorites){kind=link}
![[image]http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs44/i](http://www.stumbleupon.com/to/1pq3kF/fc02.deviantart.net/fs44/i/2009/146/c/5/Beautiful_Day_by_Dr4kon.jpg/t:4b224bb2b49f9;src:favorites){kind=link}
Comments