Tag Archives | Yahoo

Yahoo’s Yang Stepping Down

Posted by David Worthington on November 17, 2008 at 6:29 pm

yangwhoYahoo’s shareholders who are still ticked off with the way the company’s co-founder and CEO deep-sixed Microsoft’s attempted takeover and thereby decimated their wealth can take solace in the fact that he’s about to be put out to pasture. Today, Yahoo’s board of directors revealed that it has initiated a search for a new chief executive officer.

The official line is that Yang has decided to return to his former role as “Chief Yahoo” upon the appointment of his successor, and he will continue to serve on the company’s board. Chairman Roy Bostock is charged with leading the board in finding the new CEO, and will be consulting Yang in that process.

The make up of Yahoo’s board changed in August when activist shareholder Carl Icahn joined the board, broadening its membership ranks with allies to turn around the troubled company. The boot has been ready to kick.

“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,” Bostock said in a prepared statemen that also included platitudes about “taking the company to the next level.”

Yahoo’s stock opened at $10.50 this morning. Compare that to the $33 per share that Microsoft offered to pay for Yahoo in May–before the economy (and Yahoo) tanked. Ouch. While Roy is at it, he might consider replacing himself.

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Alas, Poor Yang! Alas, Poor Yahoo!

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 6, 2008 at 9:34 am

boohooI’m attending the Web 2.0 Summit conference here in San Francisco this week. We may be in the middle of a downturn, but you couldn’t tell it from the number of bodies (most of who paid around $4000 for a ticket) on the floor here: The event is a crowded success, with a standing-room only ballroom full of attendees and two overflow rooms. (Of course, conferences may be a lagging indicator of the tech industry’s health–most of these folks probably bought their tickets months ago, when the economy still had a pulse.)

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10 Ways to Avoid Emergency When Your Web Services Disappear on You

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 30, 2008 at 7:22 pm

Venture capitalists telling the startups they invest in that the good times are over. Big companies hunkering down. Layoffs, layoffs everywhere. You’d have to be a wild-eyed optimist not to come to the conclusion that a lot of cool consumer Web services aren’t going to close their doors before the economy turns around.

And you’d have to love living dangerously not to gird yourself for the possibility of some of the services you depend on going away. After the jump, ten tips to help you and your data survive disaster with as few headaches as possible…

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Yahoo’s Inquisitor: Better Searching With Fewer Clicks

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 23, 2008 at 6:08 pm

We users of Firefox (and the Firefox-based Flock) are spoiled: It’s easy to slip lazily into the assumption that every cool browser tool premieres as a Firefox add-on. So I managed to remain ignorant of Inquisitor, an interesting Safari plug-in that brings features for speeding up Web searching directly to the browser’s search box. But as of today, Inquisitor is also available in beta versions for Firefox and Internet Explorer. And if you use either of those browsers, it’s worth a gander.

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Google + Yahoo? Fuhgetaboudit.

Posted by Ed Oswald on October 21, 2008 at 9:20 am

Can’t say you didn’t see this coming. Merger mag The Deal reported Tuesday that Google and Yahoo will likely abandon their efforts to partner on online advertising. According to the story, regulators met with the two companies on October 17, and the tone was described as “grim.”

The DOJ is expected to challenge the partnership, although it had appeared for a time like progress was being made towards agreement on some core concessions. That now appears to not be the case.

Antitrust lawyers told the magazine that the government’s case may not be a slam dunk, however with uncertain times ahead with the economy and all, taking up a costly court case may not be in Google and (especially) Yahoo’s best interest.

Of the two, Yahoo needs this deal the most. In the wake of the Microsoft merger disaster, the company desperately is in need of good news. It’s quarterly financials — to come later today after the closing bell — are expected to be weak, and its laying off 1,500 workers, if not more.

With its own web advertising business apparently struggling, the Google deal would have given it a crutch to lean on. While the entire web advertising industry is going to take a significant hit, Google will likely be able to weather the storm easiest through its market strength.

Who wins here? Microsoft. Not only will the lack of a deal keep its hopes of becoming a serious competitor in the web advertising space alive, but it will likely make Yahoo a cheap acquisition target in the not-so-distant future.

Yahoo shareholders can’t be happy with that proposition.

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If Yahoo and AOL Merge, Will Microsoft Reconsider?

Posted by Ed Oswald on October 6, 2008 at 1:28 pm

The latest reports across the blogosphere seem to indicate that acquisition talks between Yahoo and AOL are intensifying, and a deal could possibly come as soon as this month. Under the current proposals, it appears that Yahoo would purchase just about all of AOL save for its ISP business.

That portion of the company would likely be sold off to a company such as EarthLink, which back in July expressed interest in such a deal. Yahoo would have no use for the Internet access portion of AOL: it currently has no ISP business and prefers to align itself with other companies to promote its core search and Web services.

A combined company may look very attractive once again to Microsoft, even though it has repeatedly said publicly that it has no longer any interest in Yahoo. In addition to its attempts to merge with Yahoo, the Redmond company as recently as late 2005 attempted to cozy up to AOL and get its then-MSN Search as the default search for its customers. Those plans backfired, and Google took a five percent stake in AOL.

With Yahoo and AOL together, it could make good strategic sense for Microsoft to come to the bargaining table once more. As VentureBeat pointed out last month, all three companies are desperate to do some type of deal, all for different reasons.

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Google Celebrates Its Birthday! Finally!

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 27, 2008 at 9:25 am

I’m not sure why I’m taking this so seriously, but I’m relieved to see that Google has finally dressed up its home page with a special logo to mark its tenth anniversary. This one’s kinda clever, since it’s based on the original, fatter, cruder version of the Googe logo:

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..as used on the site back in 1998:

The return of the old logo, with exclamation point, reminds me of a fact that’s so obvious it’s easy to forget: Google gave its company a name that was almost explicitly inspired by Yahoo, which had an exclamation point first and retains it to this day. I’m not sure when Google lost its one, but it was presumably whacked in part to make sure that Google and its branding didn’t come off as an imitation of Yahoo.

Here’s a brief post at the Google blog on the celebratory logo. And here’s a gallery of special Google logos from over the years.

Still mysterious: Whether there’s any particular reason why the logo popped up now. (Most of the rest of the Google-watching Web celebrated the company’s birthday early in September.)

[UPDATE: Search Engine Roundtable explains everything–historically, Google has marked its birthday on either September 7th or September 27th; it all depends on when people feel like having cake…)

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Yahoo! It’s Music, Right in Yahoo!

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 18, 2008 at 11:00 am

Okay, now this is cool: When you search for a musical artist or group using Yahoo Search, you may get a box at the top of the results that lets you listen to songs—full songs, not samples, and without leaving the search results. It’s done through a partnership with Rhapsody, and you can listen to up to 25 free songs a month, no registration or other heavy lifting required.

Here, for instance, is what I got when I searched for The Doors:

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Sarah Palin’s Personal Yahoo E-mail Hacked

Posted by Ed Oswald on September 17, 2008 at 2:49 pm

The McCain campaign may soon find itself defending against criticisms from a entirely new angle, thanks to some hackers who have apparently broke into two personal e-mail accounts of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. While details of what exactly was included in those inboxes are still in the process of being disclosed, it could possibly add fuel to speculation that Palin had been using personal e-mail accounts for state business.

McClatchy reporter Lisa Demer reported on this practice on Tuesday, writing that the Governor is not the only one to use personal e-mail for official work, but several others in Palin’s administration do so. Some see this as a potential method for Palin and others to get around archiving laws.

Activists have been pressing the government for more disclosure on exactly what Palin has been doing in these e-mails, which may have been the impetus for the hackers known as “anonymous” to attempt the hack. According to Wikileaks, the group gained access to Palin’s account sometime Tuesday.

While in fairness to the governor, many of the e-mails appear harmless and of a personal nature, a few are addressed to state officials. One is to Lt. Governor Sean Parnell, another to Governor’s Advisory Board on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse member Amy McCorkell. There also appear to be quite a few e-mails to Ivy Frye, an aide of Palin’s (see here and here). The contents of the Frye e-mails are not known.

Wikileaks says the Guardian has looked at the data and found that some of the e-mails include a draft of an email to Governor Schwarzenegger, discussions on state appeals court nominees, and e-mails from a “DPS,” likely the Alaska Department of Safety.

The e-mail accounts in question have since been deleted, which could be a potential problem in the ongoing investigation of the so-called “Troopergate” mess (Critics argue that Palin may have used this accounts in connection with those events). Either way, the McCain campaign has wasted no time in quickly denouncing the hack.

“This is a shocking invasion of the Governor’s privacy and a violation of law. The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these emails will destroy them. We will have no further comment,” McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said.

I doubt however that the campaign will be able to stay quiet, especially if it is discovered that Palin was misusing the accounts as has been suspected.

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