Just a short time ago we carried word that Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang intended to step down after a suitable successor has been found. In light of the recent announcement, Yang has just posted a blog entry that serves as both a state of the union address and a glimmer of reason for the decision.
It has been revealed that Yahoo! founder and CEO Jerry Yang will step down after a successor is found.
In a prepared statement, Yahoo! chairman Roy Bostock expressed that the decision had been jointly arrived upon. “Jerry and the board have had an ongoing dialog 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,” he said.
Following the announcement, Yahoo! stock (NASDAQGS: YHOO) is up 15% and climbing with a $1.33 boost. This should start to relieve Yahoo! shareholders who have suffered crushing cuts in stock value throughout the course of 2008.
Yang is expected remain within Yahoo!’s ranks as the nebulously-titled “Chief Yahoo.”
After spending two years spurning Microsoft’s generous advances and, more recently, being rejected by Google, Yahoo! is falling on tremendously hard times. All snide comments about the skills of Yahoo! management aside, it seems the flagging search giant is turning back to Microsoft to save itself.
At a Web2.0 conference in San Francisco, Yahoo! founder and CEO Jerry Yang expressed interest in resuming talks with Microsoft while admitting that nothing was under way. Meanwhile, minority shareholder and recent board member Carl Icahn continues to suggest Yahoo! sell its search services to Redmond.
As the value of Yahoo! shares flirts with $14, it will be difficult to curry enough favor to land the $37 that Microsoft offered back in July.
Just one day after it was alleged that Google was restructuring its deal with Yahoo! in an attempt to quell regulatory concerns, Google has walked away from its proposed deal.
Citing a disinterest in a legal battle with antitrust regulators, Google has washed its hands of the ordeal. This occurrence leaves many to wonder how Yahoo! intends to weather their severe turmoil.
According to several reports, Google and Yahoo! have revised their deal with the hope that U.S. antitrust approval will be given. It is currently speculated that the newest terms reduces the duration to two years from ten and caps the revenue Google can obtain from Yahoo! at 25%.
Yahoo!’s Zimbra, a communication and collaboration suite comparable to Office and Exchange, is now entering the cloud.
Yahoo! has pledged to provide the SaaS on their own datacenters to meet the needs of educators and other third-party users. Yahoo! hopes that the new spin on Zimbra will sate the demands for a comprehensive mail and editing package on the go.
In response to outstanding criticism to alleged violations of human rights, three of the biggest internet giants are set to adopt a voluntary code of conduct. Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google are preparing to unify their approach to operation in China where assisting authorities can lead to censorship or protracted imprisonment for Chinese citizens.
The two year effort of technology companies, investment firms and human rights groups outlines many potential human rights issues that internet giants may face in repressive countries. The document is said to detail what a company should do before, during, and after a regime makes a request that could impinge on free speech.
While the code is seen as a step forward in the protection of human rights, it is drawing criticism due to its vague terms. Detractors for the document question how diligent companies will be in using “best efforts” to narrowly comply with governmental requests. Morton Sklar of the World Organization for Human Rights USA said that such passages create a document that proposes “general support for freedom of expression on the Internet, but doesn’t go beyond that to provide the specifics.”
The document and its official list of supporters are expected to be published next week.
At just $53.4 million, Yahoo!’s third quarter results are a far cry from last year’s $151 million. As a result of the 64% decrease, the once-mighty search giant is cutting 10% of its workforce. As of June 30, Yahoo’s employee count was over 14,000.
Jerry Yang, Yahoo! co-founder and CEO cited economic concerns as the primary reason for loss, but remained optimistic about their future. “As economic conditions and online advertising softened in the third quarter, we remained highly focused on our 2008 strategy to invest in initiatives that enhance not only our long term competitiveness, but also our ability to deliver for users and advertisers in this more difficult climate,” he said.
After the recent hiring of layoff experts Bain & Co., it has been a matter of when, not if, employees would be shrugged from Yahoo! in another round of downsizing. It is expected that their Tuesday financial conference call will announce a reduction of between one thousand and three thousand employees.
The ongoing drama continues as a Yahoo!’s stocks slip below $12 per share, a far cry from the $33 offered by Microsoft not so long ago. The rising clamor, calling for a sell-off to Microsoft at $22 per share, comes from Mithras Capital Partners which is purported to own 00.14% of Yahoo!. While the lobbying is not a complete selloff, it “would unload Yahoo’s Asian assets and non-search businesses, extract $3 billion worth of cost savings, and receive $2.8 billion of tax benefits.”
Last Saturday Icrontic ran a comprehensive analysis of the tensions between Microsoft and Yahoo!. We noted then that Yahoo’s! annual board elections were fast approaching and have since come to pass. In a surprising conclusion, Yahoo!’s standing board of chairs has been reelected in full.
All current board members received a minimum of 78% support, with Yahoo! founder Jerry Yang receiving 85% endorsement. Roy Bostock, another board member instrumental in rejecting Microsoft, received 79% endorsement.
The board’s Director, Robert Kotick, netted an overwhelming 92.5% but resigned immediately at the conclusion of the meeting. He has been replaced by Carl Icahn, who now sits on the board to represent the minority interest in Microsoft’s ownership.
In the ruthless world of mega-corporate mergers, few events have been more drawn out or drama-filled than that between Microsoft (NASDAQGS: MSFT) and Yahoo! (NASDAQGS: YHOO). Our story begins in May of 2006 with an unconfirmed press report that Microsoft was considering purchasing a stake in Yahoo! in the first of many steps to stem the tide of Google. Such a merger was favorably looked upon, allowing Yahoo! to maintain its “buy” valuation with many stock analysts and securities firms. This came on the heels of an October 2005 announcement that Y! IM and MSN Messenger would be interoperable. Analysts and investors hoped that the momentum would carry, but talks had all but fizzled.
“They are going to burn the furniture if we go hostile”.
Yahoo’s post-Microsoft stock “plunge” wasn’t much of a plunge.
Perhaps Google scuttled the MS-Yahoo non-deal “by smiling and passing out money“.
