Longtime Microsoft exec Yusuf Mehdi is taking over a big part of Microsoft’s online services portfolio–including marketing, business development and product management for MSN and the search properties.
But Microsoft has yet to name an overall digital head for these online properties, which has been promised by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer since the departure of Kevin Johnson in late July.
Here is the full memo Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent out to the troops about the big changes in its organization, including the departure of Platform and Services Division President Kevin Johnson, in which he addresses Apple, Yahoo, Google and more.
Kevin Johnson, the point person for Microsoft’s failed bid to buy Yahoo, is leaving the company to run Juniper Networks.
As the president of its Platform and Services Division, the smooth Johnson has been trying, without much success, to beef up the software giant’s efforts in the Web space, especially in the online advertising arena.
Tonight, The Wall Street Journal and Reuters had nearly identical stories, noting that Microsoft was interested in buying Yahoo’s search business, which–oh, we bloggers are so touchy when we don’t get even a smidgen of credit, aren’t we?–BoomTown speculated was just what the software giant was interested in yesterday.
To be fair, both Reuters’ and The Journal’s reports make such a plan by Microsoft even more definitive and both have interesting new details, which are intriguing.
Well, I can tell you what Microsoft might do if it ever got Yahoo to stop snubbing its efforts to acquire the troubled Internet portal.
According to numerous sources familiar with Microsoft’s thinking whom I have been talking to this past week, quite a lot–from creating a single search index to forming one common ad platform to running the place with longtime Microsoft execs at the helm.
So let’s just ignore for now the latest wrinkle in this obviously dysfunctional relationship between Yahoo and Microsoft–which is beginning to remind me of that bizarre Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and football situation.
Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
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