Internet Marketing Specialist, SEO

Jerry Yang, the co-founder of Yahoo! will step down as the chief executive of the Internet giant, ending a 17-month long turbulent tenure which saw him rejecting a takeover bid from Microsoft.

Yang’s decision to step down follows months of criticism from various quarters on a range of issues including his move to shun Microsoft’s 47.5-billion dollar buyout offer.

“Jerry and the Board have had an ongoing dialogue about succession timing, and we all agree that now is the right time to make the transition to a new CEO who can take the company to the next level,” Yahoo! Chairman Roy Bostock said in a statement on Monday.

However, the 40-year old Yang would return to his “former role as Chief Yahoo!” — the position for corporate strategy — once the successor is appointed, and would continue in the company’s board.

Both external and internal candidates are being looked for replacing Yang.

“We are deeply grateful to Jerry for his many contributions as CEO over the past 18 months, and we are pleased that he plans to stay actively involved with Yahoo! As a key executive and member of the Board,” Bostock said.

In addition to the Microsoft takeover fiasco, Yahoo!’s much talked about advertisement deal with search engine major Google also fell through, after the latter pulled out citing regulatory hurdles.

Yang in a complete turnaround recently said that merger talks with Microsoft should resume.

Moreover, Yahoo!’s talks with Time Warner’s AOL did not materialise.

He, along with the independent directors and in consultation with Yang, is leading the process of assessing potential candidates and determining finalists for consideration, Bostock said.

The board has retained Heidrick & Struggles, a leading international executive search firm, to assist in the process. Meanwhile, reports also suggest, with Yang leaving the chief executive position, the merger talks with Microsoft might restart.

In recent months, the shares of Yahoo! has taken a severe beating and is currently trading at around 10 dollars. Though the scrip went up after the news of Yang’s stepping down came up, it closed at 10.63 dollars, down 1.76 per cent on the Nasdaq on Monday.

Yang who assumed the chief executive role in June 2007 said that right from founding the company to guiding its growth “into a trusted global brand” he has always sought to do what is best for our franchise.

“When the board asked me to become CEO and lead the transformation of the company, I did so because it was important to re-envision the business for a different era to drive more effective growth.

“Having set Yahoo! on a new, more open path, the time is right for me to transition the CEO role and our global talent to a new leader,” Yang said.

The co-founder of Yahoo! noted that he would continue to focus on global strategy and to do everything that he can to help the company realise its full potential and enhance its leading culture of technology and product excellence and innovation.

Image: Yahoo Inc.! CEO Jerry Yang speaks at the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show at the Las Vegas Hilton | Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - After nearly a year spent seeking alternatives to Microsoft Corp’s buyout offer, Yahoo Inc’s Chief Executive Jerry Yang said he believes a deal between the two is still the best option for the beleaguered Internet company.

Speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit hours after archrival Google Inc ditched its search advertising partnership with Yahoo, Yang said he remains open to selling the Internet company to Microsoft, but at the right price.

“People who know me know I don’t have an ego about remaining independent versus not remaining independent,” the embattled executive told the gathering.

Yang also said he remains “open-minded” about selling Yahoo’s search business to Microsoft, but noted that there was no “new news” on talks between the two companies.

Microsoft had offered to buy Yahoo’s search business after withdrawing an offer for the whole company in May.

Yahoo shares surged on Wednesday after a rumor posted on a blog said Yahoo and Microsoft were in advanced talks to sell the company for between $17 and $19 a share. The blog also reported that Yang would step down from his CEO position.

Yahoo officials later said the report was untrue.

Yahoo’s stock price is currently trading far below the $31-a-share Microsoft originally offered, and the company has come under severe criticism from investors for turning down the software giant’s offer.

Yang also declined to comment on Yahoo’s discussions with Time Warner Inc about buying its AOL division, which sources have told Reuters are ongoing.

Instead, the Yahoo co-founder spelled out his vision for the company, which includes becoming a one-stop consumer brand that lets people access what they want on the Internet.

Yang also said he was disappointed at Google’s decision to walk away from the search pact. The two companies signed the deal in June when Yahoo was looking for ways to build an independent growth strategy.

The search deal was expected to add $800 million in annual revenue for Yahoo.

But Google, concerned that the U.S. Department of Justice would block the agreement on antitrust grounds, decided to withdraw from the partnership on Wednesday.

Responding to a question about whether he had any regrets about stepping into the CEO role last year, Yang said: “I don’t regret a moment of what happened even though it’s not been the most fun thing.”

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Technology Writer

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Google Inc.’s chief executive said Wednesday the Internet search leader won’t delay its proposed advertising partnership with rival Yahoo Inc. even if government regulators need more time to assess whether the alliance will diminish competition.

After voluntarily delaying the start of the Yahoo deal three months ago to give antitrust regulators time to review the potential impact, CEO Eric Schmidt said he isn’t willing to wait very much beyond an Oct. 11 deadline spelled out in the companies’ contract.

“Time is money in our business,” Schmidt told reporters in a 75-minute meeting that covered a wide range of topics.

He declined to predict whether regulators might try to block the partnership.

“While we have been talking to regulators, we don’t know what their position is,” Schmidt said. “We don’t know if they think it’s a good deal or poor deal.”

The pact between Google and Yahoo raised competitive concerns because the two companies combined control more than 80 percent of the rapidly growing U.S. market for advertising connected to Internet searches.

Microsoft Corp. and a large group of advertisers have complained that Google will gain too much pricing power by linking up with Yahoo — an assertion Google disputes because its rates are set in an auction-style process. Yahoo also has the right to pick which Google ads to show on its site.

Antitrust regulators are nevertheless taking a hard look at the partnership, and recently hired an outside lawyer to help review evidence in the case so far.

Schmidt blamed the backlash against the Yahoo partnership on Microsoft’s lobbying and Google’s own inability to explain the benefits more clearly. “There is a natural fear of things getting larger,” he said.

By forging the partnership, Google provided Yahoo an escape from Microsoft, which spent five months trying to buy Yahoo in its entirety or at least its online search engine.

Yahoo now desperately needs the Google partnership to pan out to avoid further inflaming shareholders already upset about the company’s decision to reject Microsoft’s last takeover offer of $47.5 billion, or $33 per share.

Microsoft withdrew the bid after Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang sought $37 per share — a price that Yahoo’s stock hasn’t touched since early 2006 and is unlikely to reach any time soon.

Yahoo shares fell 44 cents to $18.82 Wednesday.

By relying on Google’s superior technology, Yahoo thinks it can boost its annual revenue by about $800 million. Google hasn’t said how much it expects to make from the deal, only that it won’t rake in as much money as Yahoo.

Sitting alongside Schmidt, Google co-founder Sergey Brin said the company believes in giving the majority of advertising revenue to its partners because “we don’t want them to resent us in the future. We feel like putting up content is a lot of work.”

Brin also said Google felt obligated to help Yahoo because its co-founders, Jerry Yang and David Filo, played an instrumental role in persuading Brin and his partner, Larry Page, to turn Google into a company 10 years ago.

Google’s own stock has been hit hard amid fears that the spreading economic trouble around the world will cause advertisers to curtail the spending and slow Google’s rapid growth. Google shares dropped $28.44 Wednesday to finish at $414.49 — a 40 percent drop from the price at the end of last year.

But Schmidt and other Google executives insist that the Mountain View, Calif.-based company will continue to do well even in a recession because its system charges advertisers only when consumers click on a marketing link. And many of those clicks culminate in sales, something that advertisers are struggling to get more desperately than ever.

“I think we have benefited from the economy slowing,” said Tim Armstrong, who heads up Google’s advertising sales in North America.

The upheaval in the banking system hasn’t rattled Google either because the company’s $12.7 billion in cash is concentrated in “very, very boring investments,” Schmidt said. “The drama is in New York, not here. It’s business as usual at Google.”

Source : Yahoo news

SUNNYVALE: Hackers armed with laptop computers, camping tents and dreams of software glory invaded Yahoo during the weekend as the Internet pioneer opened its strategy and its doors to outside developers.

The “hackathon” was as much a symbol of Yahoo rising from the ashes of a burned-out courtship with US technology colossus Microsoft as it was a chance for software wizards to work their magic on Yahoo’s platform.

The approximately 300 hackers that swept onto the firm’s campus in Sunnyvale, California, had the first chance to tinker with the inner workings of Yahoo online offerings such as its globally popular free email.

Yahoo earlier in the week outlined a shift to an “Open Strategy” that it believes will jazz-up the website and lead to meshing offerings from hot online properties such as Amazon and iTunes with its web pages.

“Open is a really important strategy for us,” Yahoo Developer Network head Chris Yeh told AFP as hackers fueled up on pizza, keg beer and caffeine-based energy drinks for all-night software writing sessions.
“It is a new course for the ship. Our ability to turn Yahoo from a company that owns and operates its own sites to a company that lets other people in on the action is a critical growth moment. This is really exciting.”

Breaking down walls between websites where people store digitized photos, videos, messages, and musings is a trend that’s overdue, according to Internet users and developers.

“It’s something that really needs to happen,” Developer Ryan Moore said as he worked on a hack in a purple-and-yellow armchair overlooking sand volleyball courts. “It’s the way everything ought to work.”

Yahoo announced plans to revamp its homepage in coming months to allow people to customize home pages with mini-applications, including those crafted by third-party developers and vetted by Yahoo.

“Jerry (Yang) and I are dedicated to keeping that spirit of openness and innovation alive, but we know that we can’t come up with all the great ideas ourselves,” Yahoo co-founder David Filo wrote in a ‘Hack Day’ message.

“Hackers, bring it on.”

Hackers working alone or in teams set up camps in booths or tables in URL’s Cafe in the heart of Yahoo’s campus while others retreated to classrooms or stuffed chairs on the second floor of the two-story building.

“This is the Yahoo that you know; that you’ve always dealt with,” said Moore, who attended the company’s first and only other US hack day in 2006.

“It’s the old Yahoo: ‘We have eyeballs; we have data — have at it.’ ”

Some broke from coding intermittently through the night to nap in tents pitched in a grassy courtyard or play classic arcade videogames including Pac-Man and Galaga.

Musically inclined hackers tested their skills on faux instruments playing pretend rock stars in the Rock Band video game.
Nearly 50 “hacks” were completed by the time the event wrapped after dark on Saturday.

Software creations included a “Ganzbot” robot that reads people news, weather, Twitter messages or other information streamed to their home pages by automated delivery mechanisms known as “feeds.”

An Icarus.tv hack served up music videos in online radio style, scouring the Internet and fetching performances that promise to fit people’s tastes.

“The people here from Yahoo are psyched, excited,” Yeh said. “It’s a great event. It is one of the things we can rally about as a company.”

Yahoo claims more than 500 million users worldwide but has been struggling to cash-in on its popularity.

Yahoo’s sagging fortunes and Google’s ascension as Internet advertising king prompted Microsoft on January 31 to offer to buy Yahoo for 44.6 billion dollars in a half-cash, half-stock deal.

Microsoft was eager to combine online resources with Yahoo in order to better battle Google.

Microsoft walked away from negotiations May 3 after Yahoo rejected an offer it raised from 31 dollars to 33 dollars per share, which amounted to 47.5 billion dollars.

Yahoo subsequently made a deal with Google to put its online advertising expertise to work on Yahoo websites. That deal is to take effect later this year if it passes muster with US anti-trust regulators.

“It’s been a remarkable year so far and it is going to continue to be a remarkable year,” Yeh said. “I like interesting times. I think when things are in flux good things happen.”

Original Copyright: the economic times

Last week we launched our new search web services platform, Yahoo! Search BOSS, and pointed to a few folks that already started using BOSS. We mentioned that Daylife is integrating the BOSS API as part of the Daylife To-Go customization wizard. They’re also encouraging participants in their DayPI Developer Challenge to integrate the BOSS API in their mashups.  More >>

Microsoft has once again put in an offer to buy Yahoo’s search assets –
and once again been rejected. The latest offer was a joint one made by
Microsoft and Carl Icahn. Yahoo

slammed what it described “take it or leave” it offer and the one day
deadline that came with it. But interestingly, Yahoo now says it would sell
the entire company to Microsoft for $33 per share, the amount Microsoft was
willing to pay in May but Yahoo had rejected as too low.

Click to continue reading…

Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) is making a major shift in its battle to beat search kingpin Google and fend off on-again/off-again suitor Microsoft: giving its search to others.

The embattled Web giant today released Search BOSS (short for “Build Your Own Search Service”), a service that essentially makes its search infrastructure available as a platform on which others can innovate.

Bill Michels, Yahoo’s senior director for its open search platform, made it clear his company expects the move to have a major impact.

“We want to disrupt the market,” he told InternetNews.com. “We see a lack of innovation in search experiences on the Web and BOSS is our method of breaking that down and opening up the market to innovation.”  More >>>

Yahoo! Inc, amid criticism from billionaire investor Carl Icahn for failing to keep up with Google Inc, is inviting outside developers to tinker with its Internet search software to lure more users.

The Build Your Own Search Service, or BOSS, will allow programmers to change the order and presentation of search results, enabling them to create search engines tailored to their own sites, Yahoo said today in a statement.

For instance, a custom search engine could emphasize links to social-networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

Yahoo, owner of the second most popular search service, is trying to add more users at the expense of Google, which fields about three times the number of queries in the US Programmers who develop custom search engines will be able to show ads next to results in the next few months, Yahoo said.

“What we’re trying to do is create real innovation around search and disrupt the market,” Bill Michels, senior director of Yahoo’s open search platform, said in an interview.

Icahn is asking shareholders to replace Yahoo’s board at the company’s annual meeting on Aug. 1. He has vowed to oust Chief Executive Officer Jerry Yang and enter talks to sell Yahoo’s search business or the entire company to Microsoft Corp.

Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, California, is working with large companies to build customised search engines for their sites, Michels said. He declined to name them. The company has also partnered with schools such as Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to research search technology.

Google’s Offering: Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all offer software that lets users tweak their search engines. Google, based in Mountain View, California, released its custom search engine in October 2006. Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, offers “Search Macros” for creating personalised search pages.

Yahoo’s programme may help developers find new ways to mine the Web for information, said Barry Parr, an analyst with JupiterResearch LLC in San Francisco.

“There may be some opportunities for new services that do genuinely new kinds of things,” Parr said in an interview. “It’s a lot less clear whether this will disrupt the search business as much as Yahoo might be hoping. Google continues to operate in a pretty disruptive manner.”

Yahoo rose 19 cents to $24.01 at 9:32 am New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares had gained 2.4 per cent this year before today.