Yang to Step Down as Yahoo CEO - Beginning of the End?
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But Yahoo's stock took a beating, as did its market share. Far more people wanted to search for information on Google than on Yahoo, because Google's searches developed a reputation for being more accurate and relevant. It seemed that searchers didn't want to spend time on a portal; they wanted to quickly find the web site, product, or information they needed, and be on their way. Google catered to this with its Spartan home page.
With every search, Google displayed text ads, helping advertisers to find the right person at the right time. Google lined its pockets with the revenue from these ads. Yahoo ran ads, too – in fact, the company's display ads (as opposed to search ads) did very well. Indeed, Yahoo boasted a more diverse revenue stream than Google's, but apparently it wasn't enough to please the stockholders – and really, who could blame them, with the company's stock price falling?
Yang stepped in as CEO in mid-June 2007, as Semel and the rest of Yahoo's board faced serious shareholder criticism for what had been happening at the company. Yang's previous title had been Chief Yahoo, a title he will now resume. It wasn't the easiest of transitions back then, as he was also serving as the company's temporary Chief Technology Officer at the time. And Yahoo had received some bad PR over the jailing of a Chinese journalist – an imprisonment made possible, in part, because Yahoo cooperated with Chinese authorities.
By the end of January 2007, Yahoo had announced some innovations; it had revamped its Yahoo Mail and created a number of mobile applications so users could get the most out of the mobile web, regardless of the capabilities of their portable net-connected device. But Yahoo also announced that it would lay off about 1,000 employees as a cost-cutting measure and, perhaps, an admission that the “Peanut Butter Manifesto” was right: the company was spread too thin. A major reorganization was in the works.
Photo courtesy of prettytypewriters under Creative Commons license.
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