July 24, 2008

Former Yahoo, Tacoda Exec Heads to interCLICK

Jason Lynn, Director of Solutions Engineering for Yahoo/Right Media is exiting the Sunnyvale search engine to become Executive Vice President of Product Management at online advertising network interCLICK. Prior to his Yahoo/Right Media stint, Lynn was Director of Product Management at behavioral targeting firm TACODA, which was acquired by AOL in July 2007.

That's the same month Yahoo finalized its acquisition of Right Media.

Lynn joins an exodus of Yahoo execs as of late. Network Division Executive Vice President Jeff Weiner left and became Executive in Residence at two venture capital firms. Vish Makhijani, Senior Vice President of Search, is now heading up the Bay Area operations of Yandex, a Russian language search engine. Brad Garlinghouse, Sr. VP and author of the Peanut Butter Manifesto, and Qi Lu, Executive Vice President of Search and Advertising Technology have left as well.

Founders of other Yahoo-acquired companies aren't sticking around either. Flickr co-founders Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake and del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter have said their goodbyes.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 26, 2008

Yahoo Plans Reorg: More Centralization

Confirming recent rumors of another coming reorganization, Yahoo today announced its plans to centralize many of its product and engineering teams into one regional group in the U.S., rather than maintaining separate divisions for each set of products.

Yahoo is creating three new teams that will report to President Sue Decker:

1. An Audience Products Division will assume responsibility for companywide product strategy and product management. It will be led by Ash Patel who previously managed the company's Platforms & Infrastructure group.
2. A U.S. region with accountability for all go-to-market activity in the U.S. will be led by Hilary Schneider, who previously headed the company's Global Partner Solutions group.
3. An Insights Strategy team will assume responsibility for centralizing and executing a common strategy for the use of data and analysis across Yahoo. The company plans to name this group's leader within the next few weeks.

According to Decker, these moves have been in the works for several months, and complement last year's changes to centralize more of Yahoo's business.

"The changes we're making today will help deliver superior global products for users and enable faster and better decision-making," Decker said in a statement. "This is a logical next step in light of our success last year in moving to a more centralized approach to developing world-class marketing products. We have planned these changes deliberately over the past several months to clarify responsibilities and to capitalize on the scale advantages while allowing for fine tuning to meet local market needs."

Yahoo has restructured its search group, which recently lost SVP and General Manager of Search Vishal Makhijani to Russian search engine Yandex. Prabhakar Raghavan has been tapped to direct search strategy, and Tuoc Luong is the interim leader of the search product team. Both Prabhakar and Tuoc will also continue in their roles as the leaders of Yahoo! Research and Search Engineering respectively. In addition, David Ku will lead the Advertising Technology Group within Search.

Yahoo is also making changes to its technology organization, devoting resources to developing a cloud computing and storage infrastructure; moving more of Yahoo onto common platforms; and creating a stronger partnership between product and engineering teams.

The new Cloud Computing & Data Infrastructure Group will be charged with developing a computing infrastructure that balances scalability with cost effectiveness. It will also move all consumer-facing platform teams to the Audience Technology Group, led by Venkat Panchapakesan.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 1:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 20, 2008

Yahoo Re-Organizes, Execs Drop Like Flies

Carl Icahn may not have to worry about the Yahoo! severance plan as much as he originally thought. Yahoo is reorganizing and execs are bailing left and right, and they're not even waiting for a proxy board takeover to make their moves.

Earlier this week came the news that Jeff Weiner was leaving the search company. Now, Qi Lu, Yahoo's Executive Vice President of Search and Advertising Technology is headed out the door. So is Vish Makhijani, Senior Vice President of Search, is also exiting.

Brad Garlinghouse, author of the (in)famous Peanut Butter Manifesto, is "considering alternatives" but is widely expected to bolt as well.

Lu, Makhijani, and Garlinghouse were all moved to the newly created Global Products group, to be headed by Ash Patel, the current Exec. Vice President of Yahoo's Platforms and Infrastructure, according to Kara Swisher. Patel has been with Yahoo since 1996 and is not seen as the type of leader needed to jumpstart the company.

However, the LA Times reported that Lu was already planning to move to China while Makhijani is heading over to Russia's leading search engine, Yandex, to lead SF-area operations.

Another move expected in the reorganization is the expanded responsibilities of Hillary Schneider, Executive Vice President of Global Partner Solutions. Schneider and Patel will be peers and report directly to Yahoo President Sue Decker, who is said to be largely responsible for the re-organization.

Still, the founders of at least 2 acquired companies aren't sticking around for the new arrangement. Flickr co-founders Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake and del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter are saying, "Adios!" to Yahoo.

At least, that "Now Hiring" notice from a few weeks ago is finally starting to make sense.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 17, 2008

It's Official: Weiner to Leave Yahoo

Last week, rumors were rampant that Yahoo's Network Division Executive Vice President, Jeff Weiner, would be leaving the Sunnyvale search engine. The news is now official, with an announcement of Weiner's new role as an Executive in Residence at Accel Partners and Greylock Partners, two venture capitalist firms.

Weiner will split his time evenly between the two firms, advising leadership on their existing tech portfolios as well as consulting on new investment opportunities.

“Jeff’s operational experience in scaling products, teams and revenue will help Greylock enhance our capabilities and add value to our investments,� said David Sze, General Partner at Greylock.

“We are thrilled to have access to Jeff’s perspective on web product strategy and operations,� said Theresia Ranzetta, General Partner at Accel. “Additionally, we look forward to leveraging Jeff’s expertise regarding the convergence of media and technology for existing and future Accel portfolio properties.�

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 11, 2008

Yahoo Exec Set to Bail?

Yahoo's Jeff Weiner, Network Division Executive Vice President, is rumored to be leaving the company after a month's long paternity leave, according to Kara Swisher. Weiner is reportedly tired of all the drama caused by the failed Microsoft acquisition and Carl Icahn's proxy board. Weiner may become an executive in residence at a Silicon Valley venture capitalist firm (he wouldn't be the first to do so).

Four Senior Vice Presidents are rumored to be the most likely candidates to fill Weiner's shoes.

• Front Door and Network Services’ Tapan Bhat
• Brad Garlinghouse, who heads Yahoo’s communications and communities arenas
• Media Group head Scott Moore
• Yahoo Search’s Vish Makhijani

A fifth option is not to replace Weiner at all and to re-organize the company structure once more.

What would you do? Leave now or wait in case the severance plan is enacted. Tell us in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yahoo! Says Severance Plan Unlikely to Cost $2.4 Billion

In a series of letters, Carl Icahn has been giving Yahoo's Board of Directors a hard time about a severance plan that would be enacted if a "Change of Control" occurred at the company. He claims the plan would would cost $2.4 billion, making an acquisition or change of board of directors very costly.

But Yahoo has filed an FAQ with the SEC defending the severance plan and attempting to explain why the $2.4 billion number is unreliable.

• The severance plan would only take place if a Change of Control occurs.
• Voting in Carl Icahn's board at the shareholders meeting would trigger the plan, and the closing of an acquisition deal with Microsoft would trigger the plan.
• Yahoo cannot retract the plan until 30 days after the abandonment of a potential Change of Control, including an announcement of Change of Control. Essentially, Icahn himself made a termination of the severance impossible by announcing the proxy board so soon after Microsoft abandoned its bid.
• Yahoo's compensation consultant did not call the severance plan "nuts." He called the idea that 100% of Yahoo employees would use the plan "nuts."
• Icahn got the $2.4 billion number from a shareholder lawsuit filed in the state of Michigan. Using the same assumptions as the lawsuit, Yahoo says the number would be closer to $845 million if 30% left and $514 million if 15% left. This is all based on a $35 per share stock price. Icahn is urging Yahoo to sell for $34.375.
• The plan would be enacted for employees who were fired without Cause or those who left for Good Reason. Cause is used by companies to fire employees who aren't doing their job. Good Reason could be used if an employees salary or bonus target was decreased substantially, if they were relocated further than 35 miles from their current office, or if there was a big change in an employee's duties and responsibilities.

And what about the "poison pill" characterization by Icahn? Here's what the FAQ had to say about that:

The term “poison pill� is widely understood to refer to stockholder rights plans which work by allowing existing stockholders (except the acquiror) to buy more shares at a substantial discount to the then current share price of the target if the acquiror purchases above a specified level of stock of the target (usually 15%) without the consent of the target’s board. As a result, this substantially dilutes the acquiror’s holdings and makes the acquisition much more expensive. The Plan, which is designed to preserve the value of Yahoo! during a period of uncertainty, has no such purpose or effect.

What do you think of Yahoo's FAQ? Are they really looking out for their employees or are they trying to prevent an acquisition or a proxy board takeover? Sound off in the comments!

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 30, 2008

Jerry Yang's Anything-But-Silent Life

While many are saying how Jerry Yang seems to be silent on last weekend's come-and-gone Microsoft ultimatum, his life is anything but silent. Kara Swisher reports that his wife had a baby!

But I'm not sure why people expect Yang to pull himself away from his new bundle of joy to simply repeat what he's said all along: Yahoo is undervalued by Microsoft's bid and the answer to the offer as it stands is No.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:31 AM | Permalink

April 3, 2008

Yahoo! also Loses Rock Star; Music VP Ian Rogers Moves to Start-up

Two months after acquiring FoxyTunes, and setting in place a bold new plan for Yahoo! Music, Vice President Ian Rogers has resigned from Yahoo! Music to join stealth start-up TopSpin Media, which aims to use software to help artists earn money from their music. Rogers had some serious plans in mind for Yahoo! Music and it's sad we won't see them come to fruition. Yahoo! has had some great success in the media market--pictures at Flickr, the new web-based Yahoo! Media Player--while continuing to fall behind Google in search share. Yahoo! needs to start looking for a replacement ASAP if they want to stay relevant.

Posted by Eli Feldblum at 3:47 AM | Permalink

February 13, 2008

Yahoo Layoffs Top 1,000 Employees in U.S.

Yahoo layoffs may top 1,000 employees before the U.S. mass layoff ends.

When 50 or more new claims for unemployment benefits are received from one company in a month, government statisticians designate it a mass layoff.

If the layoff lasts more than 31 days, it's called an extended mass layoff. This one? Massive.

Techmeme has excellent coverage of individuals who've made their job loss public or blogged about their experience. No stigma. No badge of shame.

Signs of the subprime times we live in.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 12:35 AM | Permalink

January 21, 2008

Yahoo Layoffs Downsized to Hundreds

Yahoo job cuts won't be as severe as rumored this weekend. Kevin Delaney of The Wall Street Journal reports sources close to Yahoo put the estimated number of layoffs in the hundreds. The New York Times chimes in with a similar figure and equally anonymous sources.

No one seems to know the exact extent of any future layoffs.

Paul Kedrosky of Infectious Greed knows one thing for sure: "When Yahoo does deliver the layoff numbers ... the company's stock will likely be sold, with the numbers not matching the whisper and therefore disappointing investors with its lack of aggression."

Miguel Helft in the NYT reports today on weekend blog reports of the layoffs: "During the weekend, some blogs reported that Yahoo was considering layoffs of 10 to 20 percent of its work force. But the people close to the company, who discussed Yahoo’s layoff plans on condition that they not be identified, said the cuts would most likely be in the hundreds."

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:44 PM | Permalink | TrackBack

January 9, 2008

What's Next for Terry Semel?

When Terry Semel joined Yahoo as chairman and CEO in May 2001, he left behind the investment firm he started, Windsor Media. According to a report from paidContent.org, Semel is reviving that company, after losing his job as CEO in June 2007. Semel still sits on Yahoo's board of directors as non-executive chairman.

He's reportedly taking a couple of Yahoo execs with him: Drew Buckley, who headed Yahoo Originals, and Jeff Karish, head of media strategy. It remains to be seen how Windsor Media will take shape, either as an investment firm or media company.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:22 AM | Permalink

October 19, 2007

Yahoo CMO Resigns, Heading for Big Consumer Brand?

Yahoo chief marketing officer Cammie Dunaway will leave Yahoo on November 2 for a new opportunity, which may be a large consumer brand, according to ClickZ News. She reportedly told colleagues she will not share details about her new position until the middle of next week. Dunaway, who joined Yahoo in 2003, formerly managed interactive advertising for Frito-Lay.

Yahoo's VP of Global Brand Marketing Allen Olivo "will serve as the acting leader" and report to Yahoo President Sue Decker. Kara Swisher broke the news on the BoomTown blog this morning.

UPDATE: Dunaway announced that she is joining Nintendo as executive vice president for sales and marketing, effective on Nov. 5.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 5:12 PM | Permalink

October 1, 2007

Yahoo Calls In Steve Jobs to Inspire VPs

Instead of the rumored mass firing expected to take place at last week's all-day meeting of top Yahoo execs in Sunnyvale, attendees were treated to real goals and concrete plans from company leadership, and a guest appearance from Apple CEO Steve Jobs to provide an extra burst of inspiration, according to Kara Swisher.

What do you do when you want to inject a little inspiration into a company that needs a lot of it? Do you hold an all-day meeting of top execs where you actually outline specific goals and exhibit better leadership? Do you admit your corporate culture is a little weak and promise to focus on strengthening it? Do you trot out all the senior execs and let them talk about their concrete plans (and, better still, actually prepare them to deliver their spiel with some level of quality)? Do you do some post-lunch touchy-feely group exercises to get people talking?

Best of all, if you really want to send things over the top, do you bring out an icon so beloved as to give goosebumps to explain to the troops how he managed to turn his once-beleaguered and now-soaring company around?

All that and more occurred on Friday at Yahoo HQ as CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker really put on a show that seemed to resonate with the 300-plus top Yahoo executives (vice president and above) gathered there, capped by an appearance by Apple’s Steve Jobs, who is apparently now Silicon Valley’s equivalent of Oprah.

The company is 76 days into the return of Yang as CEO, following the departure of Terry Semel from that role in June. While Yang had promised a "100-day review," he has since backed off from a concrete timetable. Regardless of the timetable, it's clear that changes are already afoot, and more are planned at Yahoo, the perennial second-place search engine.

According to Swisher, much of the focus of Yang's plans revolve around an "ecosystem" that centers on the interplay of advertisers, publishers, and consumers. Plans include building out Yahoo's ad network, using its "consumer insights" to improve ad targeting, creating a corporate culture open to new ideas, and a more open developer network, Swisher said.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:07 PM | Permalink

August 30, 2007

More Exec Moves at Yahoo

Yahoo, which has undergone a few rounds of reorganization this year, is in the midst of more changes in its ad sales business. This time, Hilary Schneider will be tapped to head a group overseeing ad sales and publisher relationships, effectively replacing Greg Coleman as head of global sales, according to Kara Swisher at All Things Digital.

In an internal memo (posted by paidContent), Yahoo president Sue Decker describes the changes, describing a new Global Partner Solutions (GPS) division under Schneider that will have responsibility for all of Yahoo's “partners� – advertisers, agencies, resellers, publishers, ad networks, developers, or others.

Jeff Weiner, EVP of Yahoo's Network Division, will add to his responsibilities, currently including most consumer-facing assets, including search and social media sites. Weiner will regain control of many of the businesses previously under Schneider in the Local Markets and Commerce (LMC) division, including shopping, travel, autos, real estate and local. Weiner ran these businesses from 2002 to 2006 as SVP of search and marketplaces, before a previous reorg moved them under Schneider.

This reorg is not yet as big as the moves in June to oust Terry Semel, when Jerry Yang returned as CEO and Sue Decker was named president; or February's creation of three new operating groups (although much of that was undone by Semel and Decker). But since it's just about halfway through a 100-day plan by Yang to scrutinize the business, we can expect more changes to come in the next 50 days.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 8:08 AM | Permalink

June 18, 2007

Yahoo's Semel Ousted as CEO

Embattled Yahoo CEO and Chairman Terry Semel has been replaced as CEO by Yahoo founder Jerry Yang. Susan Decker has been named Yahoo's president. The board of directors has replaced Semel, leaving him as non-executive chairman of the board.

ClickZ has more details on the story, and paidContent has notes on Yahoo conference call announcing the changes.

Got any comments on the move, or ideas for changes Yang should make? Share them in the SEW Forums.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 4:33 PM | Permalink

May 30, 2007

Yahoo CTO Retires

"Yahoo!’s CTO, Farzad Nazem, 45, has decided that it’s time to take a breather and has announced his retirement. His last official day at Yahoo! will be June 8, 2007", according to the company press release.

"Zod agreed to remain on board to help see Yahoo! through some key milestones including the company and subsequent Technology Group re-design efforts as well as the critical launch of Panama. Zod has established an extremely strong and accomplished leadership team within the technology organization" the press release explained.

"Effective immediately, Jerry Yang has agreed to step in as the interim executive sponsor of the group and will work closely with David Filo and the technology leadership team to continue to drive the technology strategy forward. We will begin an immediate search for a new technology leader.

For additional information on Zod’s retirement, please read his post on our corporate blog, Yodel anecdotal: http://yodel.yahoo.com/2007/05/30/eleven-years-12000-yahoos-and-one-great-ride/."

Posted by Frank Watson at 5:56 PM | Permalink

May 15, 2007

Yahoo Names New CFO

Yahoo! announced today it will appoint Blake Jorgensen, the co-founder of Thomas Weisel Partners, as their new Chief Financial Officer. He is scheduled to assume the position June 4th. The previous CFO, Sue Decker, has been named head of advertising and publishing.

The company press release details his experience:

Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO), a leading global Internet company, today announced that the Board of Directors has appointed Blake Jorgensen, the co-founder of Thomas Weisel Partners, as chief financial officer. Jorgensen will commence employment with the Company on or about June 4, 2007. Jorgensen will replace Susan Decker, who has moved into a new role as head of the advertiser and publisher group. Jorgensen will be a key member of Yahoo!'s executive team, overseeing the company's finance, investor relations and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) groups. He will report directly to Yahoo!'s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Terry Semel.

"Blake has a strong track record of building and running a successful investment banking franchise serving many clients in the Internet and technology industries. His broad financial, operating and strategic experience, which complements the deep financial expertise of our existing team, will make him a valuable addition to Yahoo!'s senior management," said Semel. "Blake will help Yahoo! continue to execute against our growth plan and identify emerging opportunities, as well as maintain our tradition of financial excellence and fiscal discipline."

Prior to his Yahoo! appointment, Jorgensen was with Thomas Weisel Partners, which he co-founded in 1998 and where he served as chief operating officer, co-director of investment banking and a member of the Executive Committee. In these roles, he was instrumental in managing all aspects of the publicly traded investment bank, working in close partnership with the CEO, members of the Executive Committee and the Board of Directors. Jorgensen also managed the firm's relationships with key investors and managed several strategic alliances with international partners.

Prior to joining Thomas Weisel Partners, Jorgensen was a managing director and principal at the corporate finance department of Montgomery Securities. Earlier in his career, he also worked as an independent management consultant and held roles at MAC Group/Gemini Consulting and Marakon Associates.

Jorgensen holds a Bachelor of Arts from Stanford University with a major in Economics, and a Masters of Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

"I couldn't be happier to be joining Yahoo! to help it achieve a new level of success as an Internet leader. And I'm excited about joining a finance team that, collectively, has such deep functional experience," said Jorgensen. "I believe Yahoo! is well positioned to deliver value to shareholders -- with unique audience, advertising and technology assets and a strong financial base -- and the company is pursuing the right strategy to achieve its great potential. Yahoo! has made significant strides in recent months and I am looking forward to working closely with Terry and the rest of Yahoo!'s impressive management team to continue the company's progress as it aggressively executes against its growth strategy."

Decker assumed her new role as part of the company's reorganization in December 2006. That reorganization was designed to align Yahoo!'s operations with the company's key customer segments -- audiences, advertisers and publishers -- and more effectively leverage Yahoo!'s significant strengths to capture future opportunities for growth.

"Blake's arrival will enable Sue to devote her full attention to her new responsibilities where she is building on the recent momentum we've achieved with Panama, major new partnerships and our agreement to acquire Right Media. With Blake's appointment, we're continuing to put the right people in the right places to execute against our strategy and adding outside talent to complement an already strong management team," added Semel.

Posted by Frank Watson at 10:24 AM | Permalink

April 30, 2007

Yahoo Search VP Leaves for VC Firm

Yahoo's VP of consumer Web search Andrew Braccia has left Yahoo for the greener pastures of venture capital, joining Accel Partners this week as a principal, according to Venture Beat. Accel investments include Brightcove, Coremetrics, Facebook, Medio, and Trulia.

Braccia, who had reported to EVP Jeff Weiner, helped launch Yahoo Answers, and integrate its acquisitions of consumer-facing tools like Delicious and Flickr.

He's been replaced by Vish Makhijani, who most recently served as VP of Yahoo Search Marketing International. Makhijani joined Yahoo with Inktomi, where he was VP and GM of Inktomi Web search.

Back in December, Yahoo saw sweeping changes to its management team, creating three operating groups and shuffling top execs.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 9:03 AM | Permalink

March 22, 2007

Yahoo Renews Click Fraud Prevention Efforts

Yahoo today put a renewed focus on fighting click fraud by appointing Yahoo vet Reggie Davis as the new VP of marketplace quality. Davis has been in Yahoo's legal department for 7 years, with duties that included managing Yahoo's click fraud litigation. He has been tapped to lead a team of cross-functional groups focusing on click fraud and other quality issues.

John Slade, who had been Yahoo's most visible representative in its anti-click fraud efforts, will resume a product-focused role in building out future Yahoo ad products.

In discussing his new role, Davis also shared with SEW that Yahoo's "network discard rate," representing the average number of clicks (in aggregate) that its clickthrough protection filters identify, tag and do not bill to advertisers, is between 12 and 15 percent.

More details on Davis' role can be found in today's SearchDay, "Yahoo Steps Up Click Fraud Efforts."

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 2:54 AM | Permalink

March 19, 2007

Yahoo! Loses Another Executive

Deanna Brown, general manager of Yahoo! Media Group’s Lifestyles business unit, has been hired by Scripps to head their newly formed Interactive Group.

Brown worked at AOL prior to her coming to Yahoo, and also developed interactive groups for Conde Nast previously. She will report directly to Scripps President John Lansing.

Posted by Frank Watson at 1:04 PM | Permalink

December 7, 2006

Changes at Yahoo Won't Affect Search Marketing Team

With all the changes at Yahoo, it's surprising to note that there won't be too much changing on the search marketing side, at least not yet. Jeff Weiner will continue to lead the group, focusing on rolling out Panama, which remains on time and on-target, according to a spokesperson. His group will be part of the advertiser and publisher group, which will be led by Susan Decker. On the technology side, the search team will continue to report to CTO Farzad Nazem.

To keep up with the changes, wiki-style, check out the latest community-edited org chart on CogMap.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 5:59 PM | Permalink

December 6, 2006

Major Corporate Reorganization at Yahoo!

Significant changes at the executive level and operating groups were revealed last night. Three new divisions will be created, and several top execs will leave the company. Kevin Newcomb over at ClickZ gives a rundown of the changes.

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 10:14 AM | Permalink

November 28, 2006

Yahoo China's President Xie Wen Resigns After Six Weeks

PC Advisor reports that Xie Wen, president of Yahoo China, has resigned after only six weeks on the job. Zeng Ming, senior vice-president of Alibaba, will replace Xie, who is resigning for "personal reasons." Xie will stay on as a consultant for Yahoo for an undisclosed time period. This follows on Google China's president apparently announcing he would be resigning earlier this month, though I can't find a more detailed story about that.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:00 AM | Permalink

November 21, 2006

Google Beats Microsoft, Yahoo As College Grad Choice

Online Recruitment reports on a CollegeGrad.com poll showing Google is the most desired place for technology students to work for. The poll asked 1,600 respondents in October "Who would you rather work for?" The results:

• Google - 49%
• Microsoft - 29%
• Yahoo - 12%
• IBM - 10%

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:30 AM | Permalink

November 13, 2006

Yahoo Publisher Network Executives Leaving Yahoo

PaidContent.org has confirmation of rumors from Valleywag that two top executives in the Yahoo Publisher Network group are leaving Yahoo. Bill Demas, the Senior VP of Yahoo Publishing Network, is departing Yahoo to "pursue his goal of leading a small company or venture." Also, Will Johnson, VP and GM, of Yahoo Publishing Network won't be with YPN much longer. Yahoo says that Josh Siegel will replace Will Johnson.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:52 AM | Permalink

November 1, 2006

Yahoo's Tim Converse Colors SEOs

Tim Converse, the "spam fighter" at Yahoo, has a fun post he named Search engine optimization (SEO) from black to white. He tries to add nine colors between black and white. For example, a "dark gray" SEO is an SEO that "collects (aka steals) random text from other sites, and uses it to create thousands (or millions) of pages targeting particular queries. The pages have nothing original of value, but do have ads." The new shades of black and white include; Dark inky black, Charcoal, Dark gray, Slate gray, Gray, Light gray, Off-white, White, and Luminescent pearly white.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:12 AM | Permalink

October 20, 2006

Yahoo India's CTO To Join Google As R&D Lead

Steve Bryant reports that Prasad Bhaarat Ram, Yahoo India's CTO, has been hired by Google to lead the research and development office in Bangalore. Dr. Ram said, "It is a great opportunity to join Google and be involved with a company that places such great value on innovation and creativity." Dr. Ram is to begin immediately at Google.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:06 AM | Permalink

September 19, 2006

Yahoo Creating "Brickhouse" Internal Incubator To Keep Talent

GigaOM reports that Yahoo is creating an internal incubator, code named Brickhouse, to give some of Yahoo's talent a place to work without the bureaucracy of a large company. The person running the Brickhouse, love that name by the way, is Flickr founder Caterina Fake. It is apparent that Yahoo knows that hiring new talent is a hard thing to do, but keeping current talent, may be harder -- definitely more important, in my opinion.

Recent high-profile departures from Yahoo?

- YouTube Hires Yahoo's Treasurer, Gideon Yu - Martin Child, VP Of Sales & Marketing Leaves Yahoo Search Marketing - David Beach Leaves Yahoo For Start Up Wink - Former Yahoo Exec Toni Schneider On Life At Automattic - Yahoo Loses Director Of Business Development to FeedBurner - and more available to subscribers of Search Engine Watch here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:16 AM | Permalink

September 4, 2006

YouTube Hires Yahoo's Treasurer, Gideon Yu

TheStreet.com reports on a Wall Street Journal story that YouTube has hired away Yahoo's Treasurer, Gideon Yu. Gideon Yu is to begin working at YouTube this month, Yahoo said he "is taking advantage of what's a good career opportunity for him to step up to another level."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:38 AM | Permalink

August 30, 2006

Yahoo Hiring Up All The Brains

The Wall Street Journal published an article five days ago named Hoping to Overtake Its Rivals, Yahoo Stocks Up on Academics (free article available at Yahoo Research). The article describes how Yahoo is trying to compete with competitors by hiring up all the smartest people out there. About a year ago Danny wrote about The Google Battle For Hiring Tech Talent and if you are a SEW subscriber you can see all of Yahoo's recent hires here. So for now, Yahoo's plan is to hire very bright "Economists and Search Gurus" to get any edge they can against Google and MSN.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:52 AM | Permalink

August 25, 2006

Tim Converse OF Yahoo Talks About Aggregation Spam

Tim Converse, the web spam fighter at Yahoo Search, wrote a very interesting blog entry explaining aggregation spam. In short, aggregation spam is a form of content spam where you scour the web for matches on a specific keyword phrase, then compile a page of content with snippets and chunks of content found containing that keyword phrase and related keywords around it.

Tim offers up this extreme analogy;

Imagine that you get home one night to find a stranger leaving your house with a sack containing your TV, cell phone, jewelry. You might misunderstand, until we explain that he's actually an aggregator - he's just aggregating your belongings.

Tim explains that it is hard for the search engines to draw a fine line in the sand as to what is defined as high-quality aggregation that should be included in the search engines versus those that should not be included. But one thing he personally believes is that the "the bar for inclusion ought to be pretty high."

Read Tim's personal thoughts on aggregation and search at his blog.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:08 AM | Permalink

August 17, 2006

Former Yahoo China Head Sues Yahoo For Defamation

Reuters reports that Zhou Hongyi, the former head of Yahoo China, has sued Yahoo for defamation. Yahoo said they were about to sue Zhou Hongyi for "unethical business practices." Hongyi has a 40 percent stake in Alibaba.com, which was bought by Yahoo for $1 billion last year. To me, it seems like from the article, that Yahoo finds Hongyi to be a shady character, and Hongyi doesn't like Yahoo telling the public how they feel about him.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:20 AM | Permalink

August 16, 2006

The Inside Scoop from Search Bloggers

The major search engines all have unofficial bloggers talking about what's going on in their respective companies. At a recent SES session, search-blog stars Jeremy Zawodny, Gary Price, Matt Cutts and Niall Kennedy all revealed their modus operandi, and guest writer Sara Holoubek was there to capture their insights for today's SearchDay article, Expose: Search Engine Bloggers Tell All.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 7:44 PM | Permalink

August 14, 2006

Yahoo Hires Away comScore Executive

ClickZ reports that Yahoo has hired Peter Daboll, the president and CEO of comScore Media Metrix, to be the chief of insights and head of global market research at Yahoo. Daboll explains that his position was created at Yahoo to "bring together the external world of market research and the wealth of internal data that Yahoo collects." Peter Daboll will be reporting to Cammie Dunaway, Yahoo’s chief marketing officer, in Sunnyvale, California.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:50 AM | Permalink

August 10, 2006

The Good & Bad Of Working At Yahoo

Jeremy Zawodny, famed Yahoo blogger, wrote an article that was syndicated at WebProNews named Thoughts About Working At Yahoo. It goes over an other Yahoo's employees thoughts on working at Yahoo after one year of employment there. I thought some of you may find it interesting.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:20 AM | Permalink

July 25, 2006

Yahoo Invests In Social Search Research

Reuters reports Yahoo hired Dr. Raghu Ramakrishnan as vice president and Yahoo research fellow. Dr. Ramakrishnan is a well-respected database expert who has joined Yahoo to study "links between computer and human-aided Web search." Honestly, I am excited what this can potentially mean for social search. Yahoo has so many properties that can be tightly integrated with social search; Flickr, Del.io.us, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Video, web search, desktop search, Yahoo Groups and so on.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:31 AM | Permalink

July 12, 2006

Martin Child, VP Of Sales & Marketing Leaves Yahoo Search Marketing

Brand Republic reports that Yahoo Search Marketing's vice-president of sales and marketing, Martin Child is leaving to work at Webloyalty. Child has been with Yahoo, Overture, for four and a half years prior to stepping down.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:43 AM | Permalink

June 28, 2006

David Beach Leaves Yahoo For Start Up Wink

Brian Smith notes that the senior product manager of Yahoo Shopping Search, David Beach, has decided to leave Yahoo after five years. Beach confirmed his departure from Yahoo on his blog, stating that Yahoo could not provide "the kind of opportunity that Wink is providing." Wink, a social search engine, "analyzes tags and submissions from Digg, Furl, Slashdot, Yahoo MyWeb, and other services, plus user-imported tags from del.icio.us, and favorites marked at Wink, and figure out which pages are most relevant through our TagRank (tm) algorithms." Should be a fun move for Beach.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:44 AM | Permalink

June 21, 2006

Microsoft Employees Use Google More Than MSN?

Philipp Lenssen reported on a Andrew Hitchcock post that detailed search engine usage by search engine firm. It appears that Microsoft employees prefer Google to MSN Search when searching the web. At Microsoft 66.31 percent use Google, 19.65 percent use MSN and 10.18 percent use Yahoo. Yahoo employees aren't afraid to use Google search either, with 29.80 percent of searches conducted on Google and 68.87 percent on Yahoo Search. Google employees seem to be 100 percent loyal to Google search, based on the data.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:48 AM | Permalink

May 17, 2006

Google Adding More Jobs Than Yahoo

BusinessWeek.com reports that Google is adding more jobs than Yahoo. Google has 1,800 open positions this year, up from 800 open positions last year. Yahoo has 800 openings this year, but they have declined from last year, with 935 job openings. Google is also higher a higher percentage of employees overseas, with 51% of their job openings based outside of the U.S. Yahoo has 29% of their job openings based overseas, up 15% from last year. Yahoo still has more employees than Google, with 10,098 employees at Yahoo and 6,790 employees at Google.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:59 AM | Permalink

April 28, 2006

Former Yahoo Exec Toni Schneider On Life At Automattic

Yahoo's had a number of executives depart to start-ups and smaller companies recently. Toni Schneider was one of them, leaving last January. Swapping job security for a startup at Business 2.0 has John Battelle talking with him about making the move to Automattic.

It's interesting to hear that despite the sale of Oddpost for $29 million, which Schneider headed, he still has to work for a living. Also interesting was his redefinition of comment spam as "web spam" and how fighting it with the Akismet service that Automattic runs is a revenue source.

I'm sorry -- I just can't help myself over the irony of Automattic making money fighting comment spam while just over a year ago, the company's WordPress side got dinged for making money through search spam.

I know, I know. Just let it go. Certainly Automattic's new direction and recent funding probably means they won't find themselves going the search spam route again, accidentally, inadvertently or otherwise. And goodness knows the irony remains even bigger about Google's Blogger service generating plenty of search spam that it in turn has to fight.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:09 PM | Permalink

April 17, 2006

Yahoo Adds New Senior Managers

News.com reports that Yahoo has named Ash Patel as Yahoo's new chief product officer and Qi Lu as Yahoo's senior president of engineering for search and marketing. Ash Patel will report to COO Dan Rosensweig with his responsibility being in global product strategy and development. Qi Lu will report to Farzad Nazem, Yahoo's CTO.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 1:50 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Executives Exercise Almost $300 Million Shares In 2005

Reuters reports, as does the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), that Yahoo executives have exercised almost $300 million in stock options in 2005. Terry Semel, Yahoo's CEO earned $173.6 million in 2005 by selling off around 7 million shares. He has a remaining $236.1 million worth of unexercised options. CTO, Farzad Nazem sold off 1.8 million shares netting $63.8 million. Susan Decker earned $30.9 million by selling about one million options. And Yahoo's COO, Daniel Rosensweig netted $25.6 million by exercising 912,000 options.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:59 AM | Permalink

April 6, 2006

Search Technologists Flake & Broder Speak There are two good interviews with search technologists out there for us to read. John Battelle posted A Frank Interview with Gary Flake yesterday. Battelle introduces Gary Flake as "a veteran of Overture, Yahoo and now Microsoft's vaunted research labs (he's founder and director of the new "Live Labs.")" Also about a month ago, the Yahoo Search Blog posted "A chat with Andrei Broder" Part I, Part II and Part III. Andrei Broder was the VP of research and chief scientist at AltaVista, and is now the Yahoo Research Fellow and Vice President of Emerging Search Technology.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:38 AM | Permalink

March 15, 2006

Yahoo Grants 1.3 Million Options to CEO, Terry Semel

MarketWatch reports that Terry Semel, the CEO of Yahoo, has been granted 1.3 million stock options from his company. The options have an "exercise price" of $40.68, which is about $10 above Tuesday's closing price of $30.99. These options are set to expire March 10, 2013. Semel was also granted 7.2 million options in 2004, according to the San Jose Business Journal.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 1:27 PM | Permalink

Nutch's Doug Cutting Joins Yahoo Full Time After Serving Four Years Independently

Jeremy Zawodny notes that Doug Cutting, who has been working at Yahoo for four-years as an independent contractor, as now signed on with Yahoo full time, as an employee. Doug will most likely continue working from home on his open source projects; Lucene, Hadoop and Nutch. So while Yahoo loses some employees, they gain some as well.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:24 AM | Permalink

March 14, 2006

Yahoo Loses Director Of Business Development to FeedBurner

FeedBurner announced they have hired Don Loeb, former director of business development for Yahoo's Network Products business unit. Loeb will be the Vice President of Business Development, Strategic Partnerships at FeedBurner. At Yahoo he was responsible for My Yahoo, Yahoo 360, Yahoo Groups and some other Yahoo social networking products, an area that Yahoo has been putting forth a lot of efforts.

Don Loeb wrote why he is leaving at his blog, saying;

Over the past three years, media fragmentation has rapidly accelerated as consumers have become their own programmers and, increasingly, publishers themselves. Yahoo led the way in developing some of the key user experiences (my yahoo, flickr, del.icio.us, etc.) that drove this consumer behavior shift. FeedBurner is also at the heart of this ever-changing media landscape. but, our focus is on helping publishers of all shapes and sizes navigate this new world – where syndication, subscriptions, and user generated content play ever more important roles.

This adds to the list of Yahoo executives leaving Yahoo over the past year or so. We watched Geoff Ralston, Rob Solomon, Toni Schneider, David Mandelbrot and John Glick all leave Yahoo for other companies.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 1:35 PM | Permalink

March 1, 2006

Yahoo Sues Ex-Employee for Stolen Trade Secrets

Yahoo Sues Ex-Employee for Stolen Trade Secrets - Yahoo sues former workers, alleging trade secrets were stolen from the AP covers allegations that a former Yahoo employee allegedly provided "entertainment and information tailored for wireless phones" information to MForma Group Inc.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:16 AM | Permalink

February 21, 2006

Do or Die for Yahoo's Braun?

Stefanie Olsen of News.com reports that the Head of Yahoo! Media Group, Lloyd Braun has been under a lot of heat to help Yahoo's Media Group compete. Stefanie Olsen says since Braun's hire in November 2004, he has not been able to "adapt his Hollywood know-how to the digital world." Olsen says, "Yahoo's plan to become a major Internet content player is treading water." Some believe this is do or die time for Braun.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:42 AM | Permalink

January 26, 2006

Yahoo's Senior VP of Engineering to Become Chief Product Officer

Over on Gigaom, Om Malik reports that Yahoo will name Ash Patel, the senior VP of engineering as their new chief product officer (CPO). Patel will replace Geoff Ralston, who according to Malik, is leaving for "parts unknown."

Om writes: I sat next to Ash, and got into a spirited discussion about why Yahoo is really all about My.Yahoo.Com. My contention is that forget search, because Yahoo has something better than that. My.Yahoo.Com is no longer a portal page, but instead an “attention page” which can be and should be leveraged to become the aggregator site for complicated digital life. Ash, who spent a lot of time on that particular page - building it I mean - agreed.

I wonder what, if any plans, Yahoo has for their uncluttered and ad-free search interface at Search.yahoo.com. In the past year they have modules with news headlines, email access, and stock index info. In many ways it has the potential to be a My Yahoo Lite that could also work on Yahoo's mobile platform. It would also be useful to offer a module with recommended posts (personalization) from feeds you subscribe too? How about allowing developers the chance to build modules for this page? This page already allows the user to customize which search tabs are visible. Although in the past few months they have made it a challenge to do this. One thing is for sure, when I show the Search.yahoo.com page to end users during presentations, I almost always here and audible "oooh and aaah" with people going on to say that they had no clue that it existed and they're thrilled to know about it.

Om also reports that Yahoo Instant Messenger for the Mac (aka Mac Communicator) should be coming soon.

Bow, the departure of Geoff Ralston is yet another Yahoo exec leaving. In the past few weeks we've blogged about several others departing Yahoo including:

• Rob Solomon, former vice president and general manager of Yahoo Shopping
• Toni Schneider, former head of Yahoo Development Net
• David Mandelbrot, former vice president of search content at Yahoo Search

Posted by Gary Price at 6:49 PM | Permalink

January 25, 2006

Yahoo Does Want To Be The Leading Search Engine

Are you kidding?! at the Yahoo Search Blog has Yahoo giving the official word that they do want to be the leader in search:

We thought it made sense to briefly recap how focused we are in search and our passion to be the world's leading search engine

The post goes on to talk about the technology Yahoo's acquired and built, the smart group of people they have behind that (and they are smart), ways Yahoo's trying to innovate especially in the social space and how Yahoo's reaching out to developers.

The post was sparked after much commentary erupted following the news that Yahoo's CFO Susan Decker was quoted as saying the company didn't have as a goal to be number one in internet search.

Some pushback came that Decker's quote was somehow taken out of context. I disagree. Let's look at it again:

"We don't think it's reasonable to assume we're going to gain a lot of share from Google," Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker said in an interview. "It's not our goal to be No. 1 in Internet search. We would be very happy to maintain our market share."

I thought the context was perfectly clear. Yahoo doesn't expect to take market share away from Google. As I wrote in my piece yesterday, that's not the same as saying they don't want to be number one in search quality, that they don't care about search or had given up on search. It was actually a fairly honest assessment, aimed at investing types that Yahoo isn't advising that they are going to pull many people away from their Google habit.

In other words, get off our backs about the comScore/NetRatings/Hitwise whatever stats you just got sent. They aren't going to change much (nor as I posted yesterday, have they).

Perhaps Decker went on further in the interview to talk more about Yahoo being committed to search in other ways. But I talked with the Bloomberg reporter for some time about the interview he'd conducted. It didn't sound like that aspect came up or was somehow cut-off from what he wrote. Importantly, the Yahoo Search Blog itself hasn't offered this up as explanation. If Decker or Yahoo felt the comments were taken out of context, that would have been in the Yahoo Search Blog post.

In short, I think Decker's comments were clear. Although they were about marketshare, that unfortunately does spill over into commitment overall, as I wrote yesterday. The commentary and discussion that erupted over the comments was warranted, though some of the headlines I saw were definitely over the top.

I was planning to do a "How About Some Love For Yahoo" post especially in reaction to comments by Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny and Caterina Fake, both of whom are involved in the frontline battle for searchers that Yahoo's waging. These people are dedicated, involved and have no intention to be number two in anything, as you can read in their posts. And they, like others at Yahoo, are doing all the things that the Yahoo Search Blog covers and more.

Goodness knows I've been dubious about social search and tagging. But that's more from trying to stress that it's a partial solution to improving search rather than the total solution some assume. Yahoo's being extremely innovative in this area, and that's a strength. They are smart in other ways, as well. Aside from that, they are an excellent search engine overall. Heck, they won as Outstanding Search Service from us last year. I certainly don't want them aiming for number two. I want them to be challenging Google full-force, because that type of competition means both Google and Yahoo will be better.

On the front lines, I know they're battling hard. Then generals above them need to ensure they're delivering the right message to support those troops. That doesn't mean lie or be unrealistic. Don't tell the financial markets you'll steal Google's market share away. But yes, if search is a major part of your service, you really should have it as your goal to be number one in market share. You shouldn't be "very happy" to maintain what you've got. You should be happy to maintain what you have, explain it will be a tough battle to gain more, but that ultimately you'd like to see that happen in the long term.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, Yahoo: We're OK Being Number Two.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:57 AM | Permalink

January 23, 2006

Yahoo Open New Research Labs in Chile and Spain with Respected Information Scientist In Charge

News from Yahoo that they have just opened new research labs in Chile and Spain. Yahoo has hired famed information scientist, Ricardo Baeza-Yates, to run these new facilities.

I've been monitoring Dr. Baeza-Yates web site for years looking for new research papers. If IR is of interest, this is one personal home page full of interesting material.

Thanks to Erin at Search Views for the news tip. More in this Financial Times article and official news release.

Yahoo has been steadily and impressively ramping up its research efforts in terms of new facilities and some very key hires:

+ Yahoo Opens NYC Research Center

+ Andrei Broder Joins Yahoo

+ Prabhakar Raghavan Hired To Lead Yahoo Research

+ Yahoo Announces New Research Laboratory (at UC Berkeley)

Btw, in November, Google opened a Latin American research center in Brazil.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:17 PM | Permalink

January 19, 2006

Former Head of Marketing for Yahoo, Search UK and Ireland Now at TouchLocal, a UK Business Directory

A brief item from the UK's Netimperative reporting that Karl Gregory, the ex-head of marketing for Yahoo, Search UK & Ireland is now employed at Touch Local, a UK business directory where he will be responsible for acquisition and making sure businesses connect in an effective way with customers.

The article says that while he was at Yahoo, his main task was growing Yahoo Search, UK and Ireland.

Earlier this week, Danny posted about Yahoo VP, Rob Solomon, leaving the company to go lead SideStep. Last week, I blogged about Toni Schneider, the VP in charge of the Yahoo Developer Network, leaving for the blog publishing startup, Automattic. I postscripted that item with news that David Mandelbrot, the former VP of Content at Yahoo Search, left the company in early November.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:40 PM | Permalink

January 17, 2006

Yahoo Loses Another VP, This Time To SideStep

Ouch. Last week, Yahoo saw the vice president in charge of its developer network split to start-up Automattic. Now there's news that another Yahoo vice president has departed. This time it's Rob Solomon, who was vice president and general manager of Yahoo Shopping. He's heading over to travel search engine SideStep, to become the new president and CEO. You'll find a relatively recent interview with Rob from his Yahoo days here at ComparisonEngines.com. The release isn't up yet at SiteStep's press release area yet, so here's what we were sent:

Yahoo! Executive Appointed CEO of SideStep Rob Solomon to Run Travel Search Leader

SANTA CLARA, Calif. January 16, 2006 SideStep, the traveler's search engine, announced that Rob Solomon has been chosen as the company's new president and chief executive officer. Solomon has also been named to SideStep's board of directors. He was formerly vice president and general manager of the Yahoo! Shopping Group (YHOO), where he was instrumental in building one of the largest commerce destinations on the Internet.

Solomon's vertical search expertise is considerable, having significantly grown one of the Web's premiere vertical search sites Yahoo! Shopping. Additionally, he brings extensive experience in the travel industry to SideStep, having run Yahoo!'s travel business. Solomon was with Yahoo! for six years.

"Rob Solomon has the track record and ingenuity to strengthen SideStep's position as the leader in travel search and ultimately continue to transform the online travel market," said Jim Barnett, SideStep's chairman of the board. "A veteran of portal and search wars, Rob has seen and touched all aspects of Yahoo!'s business from startup to hyper-growth. He possesses the knowledge and leadership to take SideStep to the next level and capitalize on a search engine on the verge of mass expansion."

SideStep leads the travel search category, one of the hottest sectors of the $63.5 billion online travel industry (PhoCusWright). SideStep.com searches hundreds of travel brands to find flight, hotel, rental car and vacation bargains around the globe. In addition, it generates approximately $1 billion in gross bookings annually for its partners.

"SideStep is an innovative company with a strong heritage a six year history that began with creating the vertical search market," said Solomon. "I believe in its mission to revolutionize the online travel search sector and look forward to leading the executive team to continue to define and extend a leadership role within the category."

Solomon brings a blend of consumer, commerce, travel and Internet search experience to SideStep. Having served as a Yahoo! corporate officer, Solomon has proven strategy, product and leadership skills. He was instrumental in driving major accolades for Yahoo! including, Shopping Search Engine of the Year (Search Engine Watch) and top ratings in key Comparison Shopping Reports (Consumer Reports and Forbes). He brings relevant experience from top companies such as consumer technology leader Electronic Arts and travel services powerhouse Cendant Corp. A UC Berkeley graduate, Solomon begins his new post on January 23, 2006.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:46 AM | Permalink

January 12, 2006

Yahoo VP In Charge of Yahoo Developer Network Leaves Company for Startup

Om Malik reports that Toni Schneider, the VP in charge of the Yahoo Developer Network and, according to Malik, also helped with the Konfabultor (Yahoo Widgets) acquisition and in helping Yahoo to "flickrize", is leaving Sunnyvale to be the CEO of start-up named Automattic, a company that is set to offer blogging services. Om's exclusive is confirmed by Toni with additional info on his own blog.

Postscript: David Mandelbrot is another Yahoo VP who recently left the company. Mandelbrot was the vice president of search content. He left the company in early November. He worked on numerous projects including Creative Commons search and Yahoo's membership in the Open Content Alliance.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:14 PM | Permalink

January 4, 2006

Bill Gates Keynote Address at Consumer Electronic Show Will be Webcast Tonight; CES Podcasts via Yahoo

As many of you know, the Consumer Electronics Show begins today in Las Vegas with keynote presentations from Bill Gates, Terry Semel, and Larry Page. You can view a live webcast of the Bill Gates keynote address live, beginning at 6:30 PM/PST tonight. What will he have to say about search? I'm sure an archived version of the video and a text transcript will be available soon after the speech concludes.

On Friday, Yahoo's Terry Semel speaks at 9am PST and Google's Larry Page addresses a CES audience at 4pm PST.

At the moment, I can't find any links to where webcasts of the speeches by Semel and Page will be available. If I do, I'll add them to this post as a postsript. Often, presentations from Yahoo execs are linked here and Google speeches here.

On a somewhat related note, Yahoo is offering various podcasts and from CES via their podcast service. It's accessible here.

Update: Yahoo CEO Terry Semel's keynote address on Friday will be vidcast. You can find all of the details here.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:28 PM | Permalink

December 20, 2005

Yahoo's Mayer and Zawodny Ready to Debut New Webcast/Podcast on Webmaster Radio

Daron Babin, the man in charge of Webmaster Radio (the people who help us bring you our Daily Searchcast), has let us know that two very well-known members of the Yahoo Search team, Tim Mayer and Jeremy Zawodny will host a new webcast/podcast that will debut on Wednesday (December 21st) night at 8pm EST.

"Power Source" is the name of the new show and it will be webcast the last Wednesday of each month at 8pm EST and then be available as a podcast. According to Daron, the show will be full of commentary about the valley's newest and hottest companies, interviews with insiders, and much more. The very best of luck to Tim and Jeremy on the new show. We're very much looking forward to listening.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:18 PM | Permalink

November 30, 2005

Google Looking For Interactive TV Engineers; Yahoo Needs Search Relevance and Monetization Researcher

Yes, it's time for another Google TV job posting!

This time for engineers. The title of the job is: Software Engineer, Television Technology - Mountain View and Google is looking for, "well-rounded software engineers with a proven track record in creating and deploying robust high-volume interactive TV applications and services."

In September, Danny blogged about a posting discovered by Adam Lasnik to be a product manager for Google TV. A couple of days later, I went looking for the posting and it was gone, never to be seen again.

Now, over to Yahoo. How's this for a job title: + Search Relevance and Monetization Researcher As a Search Relevance and Monetization Researcher, you will help to improve the relevance and revenue of our Web search and sponsored search products.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:25 PM | Permalink

November 29, 2005

Yahoo Sponsored Search Simulation Job & Google After API Developer Relation Specialist

You know me, I'm always perusing job listings to see if I can spot interesting positions of tnterest to SEW Blog Readers or new services/trends that might be coming soon. Today, two interesting job openings popped up, one involving "sponsored search simulation" at Yahoo and the other at Google to help reach out to developers.

First, over at Yahoo. How's this for a job title: Engineering Manager - Sponsored Search Simulation

You've heard of war games, well now it's search games:

We are looking for a highly technical, hands on, experienced manager to lead the Marketplace Simulation and Forecasting project in Yahoo Search Marketing...You will be responsible for leading a small team of engineers and analysts, working closely with software architects, business and product managers, to build out a robust, reliable, high performance platform to be used in the testing, evaluation, and forecast of new marketplace design features.

Meanwhile, a few exits away in Mountain View at Google...

Google: Developer Relations Specialist - Mountain View

Are you interested in promoting Google's API's and open source initiatives? Google says:

Google is looking for a candidate who can advocate Google open source technologies and APIs to developers and create vibrant communities around them. The candidate will be responsible for the overall planning, budgeting, execution and success of developer outreach projects and will work primarily with Google engineering. Secondarily, the candidate will act as a liaison with our Legal, PR/Marketing and recruiting personnel.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:48 PM | Permalink

November 25, 2005

The Google Battle For Hiring Tech Talent (Yahoo Sez They Win)

From the Wall Street Journal, Google ignites hiring frenzy is yet another article on how Google and other companies are after tech talent. This has a few more details and more depth about the Google recruiting juggernaut and "Google Stock Units" that are offered. Yahoo says they've won the majority of head-to-head battles over candidates.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:58 AM | Permalink

November 18, 2005

Andrei Broder Joins Yahoo

Andrei Broder, former vice president of research at AltaVista and until recently Distinguished Engineer & CTO, IBM Research, is joining Yahoo as research fellow and vice president of emerging search technology at Yahoo Research, according to this News.com article.

Broder has been involved in a wide-range of research activities related to the web and information retrieval, including the famous "bow-tie" study of web size and connectivity, and the web archaeology project together with other-well known researchers Krishna Bharat (Google news) and Monika Henzinger (Google research).

Postscript from Gary: Here's a list with a few research papers and articles that Broder has authored or co-authored that might be of interest.

Title: A Taxonomy of Web Search Author: Andrei Broder Source: ACM SIGIR Forum 8 pages; PDF Abstract: "Classic IR (information retrieval) is inherently predicated on users searching for information, the socalled "information need". But the need behind a web search is often not informational -- it might be navigational (give me the url of the site I want to reach) or transactional (show me sites where I can perform a certain transaction, e.g. shop, download a file, or find a map). We explore this taxonomy of web searches and discuss how global search engines evolved to deal with web-specific needs."

Title: Sampling Search-Engine Results Authors: Aris Anagnostopoulos, Andrei Z. Broder, David Carmel Source: WWW 14 Conference (2005) 12 pages; PDF. From the abstract: We consider the problem of efficiently sampling Web search engine query results. In turn, using a small random sample instead of the full set of results leads to efficient approximate algorithms for several applications, such as: • Determining the set of categories in a given taxonomy spanned by the search results; • Finding the range of metadata values associated to the result set in order to enable “multi-faceted search;” • Estimating the size of the result set; • Data mining associations to the query terms. -- Title: Sic Transit Gloria Telae: Towards an Understanding of the Web's Decay Source: WWW 13 Conference (2004) Authors: Z. BarYossef, A. Broder, R. Kumar and A. Tomkins 10 pages; PDF. From the Abstract: "The rapid growth of the web has been noted and tracked extensively. Recent studies have however documented the dual phenomenon: web pages have small half lives, and thus the web exhibits rapid death as well. Consequently, page creators are faced with an increasingly burdensome task of keeping links up-to-date, and many are falling behind. In addition to just individual pages, collections of pages or even entire neighborhoods of the web exhibit significant decay, rendering them less effective as information resources. Such neighborhoods are identified only by frustrated searchers, seeking a way out of these stale neighborhoods, back to more up-to-date sections of the web; measuring the decay of a page purely on the basis of dead links on the page is too naive to reflect this frustration." -- Title: Towards the next generation of enterprise search technology Authors: A. Z. Broder and A. C. Ciccolo Source: IBM Systems Journal (2004) Abstract: "Unstructured information represents the vast majority of data collected and accessible to enterprises. Exploiting this information requires systems for managing and extracting knowledge from large collections of unstructured data and applications for discovering patterns and relationships. This paper elucidates the differences between search systems for the Web and those for enterprises, with an emphasis on the future of enterprise search systems. It also introduces the Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA) and provides the context for the unstructured information management (UIM) papers that follow." -- Title: A technique for measuring the relative size and overlap of public Web search engines Authors: Krishna Bharat and Andrei Broder Source: WWW 7 Conference From the Abstract: " Search engines are among the most useful and popular services on the Web. Users are eager to know how they compare. Which one has the largest coverage? Have they indexed the same portion of the Web? How many pages are out there? Although these questions have been debated in the popular and technical press, no objective evaluation methodology has been proposed and few clear answers have emerged. In this paper we describe a standardized, statistical way of measuring search engine coverage and overlap through random queries."

Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:25 PM | Permalink

November 17, 2005

Yahoo Search Marketing Searches for a Content Specialist

I spend some time each week reviewing job openings at Yahoo, Google, and other search companies. Sometimes, these listings can provide clues to "new projects" the company might be working on. However, most of the time, it's just a company in search of an employee. I believe that's the case with this "just posted" position for a Content Specialist at Yahoo Search Marketing in Pasadena. The job might be of interest to some of you.

From the listing: The Content Specialist analyzes Web sites, researches and identifies relevant search terms, and uses Overture's cutting edge technology to create effective search marketing campaigns for new and existing clients. Works closely with multiple Sales Teams to strategize methods for enhancing CTR and ROI as well as resolve client inquiries and disputes. Works with Customer Services to resolve client issues as necessary. Occasionally, the Content Specialist will interact directly with key advertisers helping to explain where opportunities sit within their online marketing portfolio and how Overture can assist them in driving valuable traffic to their websites.

You'll find the complete job listing here.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:46 PM | Permalink

November 14, 2005

Yahoo Culture: Sunnyvale & Santa Monica

In Chris Gaither's LA Times (free, reg. required) article, Can Yahoo Sign On to Hollywood?, you'll read about the very different cultures at Yahoo's office in Santa Monica (aka Hollywood) versus their Yahoo HQ in Sunnyvale (aka Silicon Valley).

But as Yahoo strives to enter the league of Walt Disney Co., Viacom Inc. and other media giants, success hinges on its ability to merge two inherently different cultures: the brash, flashy ethos of entertainment executives and the rumpled, brainiac realm of computer nerds.

In the year since the company consolidated its Santa Monica office and began hiring a slew of former Hollywood executives bent on "convergence," Yahoo's leaders have sought to downplay the tensions. But the union has sometimes been rocky.

In Sunnyvale, it's "a cubicle society," said a person close to Yahoo, referring to the willingness of people at all levels to work in cramped workstations. Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from Yahoo, this person said the Santa Monica office, by contrast, was about " 'How big is my office? Where is my parking spot? You report to me. I don't need to talk to you.' It's very much the studio hierarchy mentality."

Btw, the article also includes a quote from Senior VP of Search and Marketplace, Jeff Weiner on just what kind of company Yahoo is: "We're often asked, 'Is Yahoo a media company or a tech company?' said Jeff Weiner, a Yahoo senior vice president and former Warner Bros. executive who runs the search and marketplace groups. "The answer to that is: 'We're both. We're a media business that is technology driven.' "

Also on Search: Consequently, search has become a big part of Yahoo's media strategy — it's the launch pad for many people to find video, music and websites — and a big revenue generator. Yahoo is locked in a battle with Google to persuade movie studios and television companies to release their material to search engines — one arena in which Yahoo's show-business connections are supposed to pay off.

A very interesting read.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:49 PM | Permalink

November 9, 2005

Yahoo's Ass Kicking Statue Controversy

This was one of those, "should I skip it" decisions, but I did find it interesting. Phillip at Google Blogoscoped in Yahoo in Battle Mode summarizes how Yahoo's mail team was given a statue (yep, there's even a picture) for "kicking an enemy's ass." That would be Google's bottom being whacked, specifically.

Phillip then points to Google's Kevin Fox having long commentary on the statue. Kevin used to be at Yahoo, and he does a compare and contrast feeling that Google's about making better products while Yahoo's focused on "how to beat Google" and finds the competition goes too far with the statue's comparison to Britain fighting Nazi Germany.

The comments after Kevin's post go all over the place and are fun to read -- pro-Yahoo, anti-Yahoo, pro-Google, anti-Google. Phillip also points to two Yahoo employees who comment on the statue as well (Ryan Kennedy suggests a toned-down description for the statue; this employee prefers the "be humble" approach).

Yahoo's new email interface is way, way cool (double verified by checking with my wife, who is a regular user) -- but honestly, the old system was already kicking Google's butt for the simple fact that anyone could sign-up for it without getting someone to send you an invite or having to get text messaged a secret code. When Gmail's freely open to anyone, then let the weigh-up really take place.

Speaking of statues, how about Yahoo putting a little message on the Bob's Big Boy statue that Chris and I came across in one of the Yahoo buildings when visiting this summer. I'll see about getting the photo off Chris's phone -- I made him stand there and take it. But it looks just like this, except the hamburger was replaced with the Inktomi logo.

Bob's an old friend I remember well, from my days of visiting Inktomi. He was in the lobby, and I'd sit next to him waiting for someone to come meet me.

If memory serves, Inktomi founder Eric Brewer bought him to represent the serving/caching service that Inktomi used to provide. When Yahoo bought Inktomi, Bob came over -- and apparently was nearly tossed out until someone gave him a home.

He deserves a better home and maybe his own message devoted to the Yahoo web search team -- those from Inktomi, plus the AltaVista and FAST/AllTheWeb vets. They assembled a great product that directly rivals Google's core search results. Heck, put Bob out in the main entrance of Yahoo! Just make the message praising the efforts without dissing the competition, and I suppose everyone will be happy.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:58 AM | Permalink

October 31, 2005

Review: Google and Yahoo Hiring Booms

Those of you who look at our blog regularly know that we try to post interesting and "telling" job openings at Google, Yahoo, and elsewhere. Chris has already blogged about Google WILL hire programs to support Open Office despite reports to the contrary. That's part of the story. This afternoon, Elinor Mills at News.com talks about the hiring rampages at both Google and Yahoo in the article: Google hiring like it's 1999.

In its most recent quarter, which ended Sept. 30, Google added 800 employees, bringing its global work force to 4,989. That's more than triple the total from just two years ago.

Btw, Google employed 2668 as of Sept 30, 2004.

According to Hoover's, Yahoo had more than 7600 employees in 2004, growing about 38%.

Here's a quick review of a few (and I mean just a few) recent Google and Yahoo job related stories and employment postings from various sources: + Via News.com: Google Hires New Public-Affairs Chief + Via News.com: Google hires another China exec

+ Via SEW Blog: Google Hiring Mac Developers + Via SEW Blog: Google Begins Hiring for Some Sort of Facility in Ann Arbor, Michigan + Via SEW Blog: Google Seeks Sales Team For Payment Solution + Via SEW Blog: Google TV Job Posting: Gone After a Day Online

And some very recent postings: + Google: Creative Maximizer Coordinator Now, that's a job title! Work in Chicago! + Google: Gmail Coordinator and Froogle Coordinators (Temp Jobs) + Google: Inside Sales Representative, Google Payment Solutions - New York + Google: Google Earth Inside Sales Representative

+ Yahoo: AJAX Web Developer - My Yahoo + Yahoo: Senior Editor, Yahoo! Tech: Yahoo! Inc + Yahoo: Yahoo! Research Scientist, Search Content Analysis Team + Yahoo: Product Manager, Yahoo! Search Submit + Yahoo: Product Manager, Yahoo! Global Search Syndication + Yahoo: Principal Software Engineer - Chinese Search Technology + Yahoo: Director, UED for PC Client -- Yahoo!

Posted by Gary Price at 7:59 PM | Permalink

October 21, 2005

Ted Meisel Leaving Yahoo

Ted Meisel is one of the smartest, far-thinking people I know in the search ads space. He should be, as the last president of Overture, before it was purchased by Yahoo and turned into Yahoo Search Marketing. Now Meisel, senior VP at Yahoo who has continued running Yahoo Search Marketing, is leaving.

Changes at the Top at Yahoo! Search and Ad Sales Units at ClickZ has more about the move, announced as part of Yahoo's earning call earlier this week. Meisel leaves at the end of the year. ClickZ reports Yahoo saying he's leaving to "recharge, spend time with his family, and pursue public policy interests."

Let's hope Yahoo's got some good lock-in on what Ted might want to do after he's feeling a bit more recharged, lest he decide to perhaps take up a new challenge with MSN or Google. In the outright war over search talent that's been going on, he's a heavy hitter now departing the playing field.

Gregory Coleman will pick up oversight of Yahoo Search Marketing's ad sales side as executive vice president of global ad sales. Jeff Weiner, Yahoo senior vice president of search and marketplace, will oversee product development aspects of paid search. More also from the New York Times here and AdWeek here.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:26 AM | Permalink

October 17, 2005

Yahoo Adds New Member to Technology Development Group

Yahoo, like their competitors, continues adding new members (it's a recruiting war out there folks) to their staff. Just this evening, JZ himself (Jeremy Zawodny) posts on the addition of Tom Coates to the Yahoo Technology Development Group led by Bradley Horowitz. He comes to Yahoo via the BBC and a long list of well-known employers including UpMyStreet.com, emap, Time Out, and has also written for The Guardian.

So, what will Mr.Coates be doing at Yahoo?

From his blog: My particular special skill - I gather - is going to be the power of my social media mojo, undercut with my feral design instincts. I'll be based in London but out in the States pretty regularly - and here's the best bit - playing with the Flickr team and the Upcoming crew and all the folks over at Yahoo Research Berkeley (among others).

This is the second recruitment item I blogged today The other post was about Google recruiting the lead developer of GAIM, an open-source IM client to work at their Seattle facility.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:33 PM | Permalink

October 5, 2005

Court Says Yahoo Speech Engineers Can Continue Working

A California judge has not issued a restraining order and 12 speech software engineers at Yahoo will be able to continue their work for the time being. The other day I blogged about Nuance, a speech tech company, filing a lawsuit against Yahoo saying that a group of engineers that moved from Nuance to Yahoo were now providing Yahoo with trade secrets. A hearing about the case is schedule on November 14th.

The order issued Monday in Santa Clara County Superior Court said the court was unable to properly assess whether any wrongdoing had occurred, and therefore declined to grant Nuance's request for a temporary restraining order against Yahoo and the engineers.

"We are pleased with the result today that the court did not grant the request for a temporary restraining order," Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo said in a statement. "We continue to believe the allegations in the lawsuit are without merit, and we plan to continue a vigorous defense."

Posted by Gary Price at 1:18 PM | Permalink

October 4, 2005

Search Engine Employees Appear on Technology Innovators Under 35 List

I was reviewing the new Technology Review list of top innovators under the age of 35 (the TR35) and came across three names in the search, online info business. Make sure tointeresting. review the complete list, a very interesting read. A tip o' the SEW Blog cap to:

+ Stewart Butterfield, 32 Flickr/Yahoo

+ Dennis Crowley, 29 dodgeball (acquired by Google)

+ David Pennock, 34 Yahoo Research

Others on the list include Bram Cohen (BitTorrent) and Regina Barzilay, 34 (MIT). During her time at Columbia University, Barzilay helped develop the automatic news summarizer, NewsBlaster. The service remains online today.