Unfortunately, it's easy to imagine Yahoo as a shuffling undead being searching for brains given the search engine's brain drain. According to TechCrunch, the company has lost at least 50 executives since January 2007. Judging from the latest press reports, the exodus has been accelerating in recent weeks.
It's gotten so hard to keep up with the reports that at least one observer started a spreadsheet. Some analysts have said that no one who has left is truly a superstar that Yahoo can't possibly do without. On the other hand, the latest spate of departures shook up a number of people, and rightly so, as they represent some of Yahoo's more visible personnel.
The one that caught my attention was Jeremy Zawodny. One of the most visible Yahoos because he keeps a blog in which he talks about the company, Zawodny used it on June 12 to confirm rumors he was leaving. One week later, from the same vehicle, he revealed his new place of employment: Craigslist. Zawodny had been with Yahoo eight and a half years. It was almost as if Matt Cutts had announced he was leaving Google.
Some more recent but equally visible Yahoos are also leaving the company. Joshua Schacter, the founder of the del.icio.us social bookmarking service, which Yahoo acquired in 2005, is leaving at the end of June. Likewise, Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, co-founders of Flickr, another successful site which Yahoo purchased in 2005, are leaving.
Plenty of “regular” executives are leaving as well. Jeff Weiner, executive vice president of Yahoo's network division, is also quitting. Qi Lu, executive vice president of engineering for search and advertising technology, is turning in his badge as well. And there's a whole lot more leave-taking going on. To the list of quitters, add Usama Fayyad, chief data officer and executive vice president of research and strategic data solutions; Vish Makhijani, senior vice president of search; and Jason Zajac, who can include on his resume the titles of general manager of social media, head of finance for the audience division, and vice president of corporate strategy.
Next to Zawodny, though, the person leaving Yahoo whose name is most likely to be recognized by outsiders is Brad Garlinghouse, senior vice president of communications and community. He was also the author of the notorious “Peanut Butter Manifesto,” an email leaked to the press that said, among other things, that Yahoo is spreading itself too thin with the number of things with which it has gotten involved. Perhaps Yahoo agrees; the deal it has made with Google will take off some of the advertising pressure and give it the revenue to refocus its efforts on search. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
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