Longtime Yahoo tech leader Ash Patel is taking some time off until early 2010.
Yahoo confirmed the break to BoomTown.
In recent days, some inside the company had mistakenly thought the 44-year-old EVP for Product Architecture & Strategy was departing the company for good.
Actually, it’s more of a sabbatical for Patel.
According to sources close to the situation, AOL has been busy selecting the board for the company, which is still set to spin itself off by year’s end–even as it slows down a decision on a new search deal with either current partner Google or a more emboldened Microsoft.
AOL is using Spencer Stuart in the search for directors, led by well-known headhunter Jim Citrin, sources said, and the company has already settled on several outside candidates.
In BoomTown’s bold quest to annoyingly stick a Flip digital video camera in the face of every Yahoo senior exec, this week I worked the last nerve of its CTO and EVP of Products, Aristotle “Ari” Balogh.
Actually, the 45-year-old Balogh is a very calm and pleasant man, especially considering the huge responsibility that has been foisted on him by CEO Carol Bartz to rejigger how Yahoo makes its products and services and deploy its technology in a more efficient, centralized and, most of all, innovative manner.
To explain all this, Balogh sat down with me twice–he is clearly a glutton for punishment–to talk about where Yahoo stood as it sought to dig itself out of its long slump and reemerge as the potent Internet force it once was.
In exactly one week at 10 am PDT, Yahoo will hold its annual meeting in Silicon Valley, the first time when new CEO Carol Bartz will greet its shareholders in person.
She should prep carefully, as the event has been quite a drama over the last two years.
Here’s a rundown of what is likely to be on the minds of investors, including the status of the isn’t-it-rich-aren’t-they-a-pair relationship between Yahoo and Microsoft.
If BoomTown were to hazard a guess, I would assume Yahoo would, if it could–in the end–sell itself off to Microsoft.
It’s just my opinion, of course, but it would still be the best-case scenario for the company, over either a more limited commercial advertising and search partnership with the software giant or, of course, going it alone.
That’s because, in 2009, it is still hard to answer the simple question: What is Yahoo?
That’s the one that stumped former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang onstage at our sixth D: All Things Digital conference last year and will be the key query that Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz will need to answer when she takes the stage Wednesday morning at D7.
Recently–in the echo chamber that is Silicon Valley–several people told BoomTown quite separately that former Yahoo President Sue Decker had become an executive-in-residence at the Blackstone Group.
Actually, when reached via email, Decker told me she has yet to decide her next step after leaving Yahoo and had simply set up a no-strings-attached desk at the private equity firm’s San Francisco office, but is definitely not an EIR there.
And who says bloggers don’t check?
In fact, a move to join Blackstone formally would have been very ironic for Decker given that the firm–specifically, longtime friend and former colleague, Jill Greenthal–was one of the advisers to Microsoft in its failed takeover battle for Yahoo.
Yahoo’s ranks keep fanning out all over the tech scene.
This time it is former top-ranking Yahoo exec Jeff McCombs, who has signed on to be CFO of Tumri, an online advertising start-up.
Backed by Accel Partners and others, the Mountain View, Calif.-based Tumri is trying to crack into the online ad space with what it calls “dynamic and intelligent display advertising solutions.”
McCombs is a big hire for a small company like Tumri. He was SVP of Business Operations at Yahoo and had also served as chief of staff to former president, Sue Decker.
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz declared reorg today on the company’s corporate blog, Yodel Anecdotal.
Here is her entire memo:
Getting our house in order
Posted February 26th, 2009 at 9:16 am by Carol Bartz, CEO
A month and a half in the saddle and today I have the perfect excuse to get blogging.
I’ve been on a whirlwind tour for [...]
There’s no question Yahoo owes longtime veteran exec Ash Patel a lot, as it has grown into a global Internet behemoth.
Since getting to the company in 1996–which essentially means he was present at the creation–Patel has pretty much been involved in all of Yahoo’s well-known consumer products.
But, because of his impact and longevity, Patel has also become a symbol for many inside Yahoo right now, who mention him most often in the should-he-stay-or-should-he-go-now debates about who should lead the company into the future.
“It’s being changed every minute,” joked one Yahoo source about the reorg now in process at Yahoo, which is being shepherded by new CEO Carol Bartz.
Actually, it’s kind of true, as execs at the troubled Web company are being moved around the board like chess pieces, while others players are added.
According to numerous sources, mostly in Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, Calif. HQ, things are still in flux and not completely settled as yet.
But one thing is clear: Layers are being collapsed quickly, as fewer people are in charge of more, with all roads leading to Bartz.
Yahoo’s top mobile exec, Marco Boerries, is departing Yahoo, according to an internal email obtained by BoomTown that he sent to some staffers on Sunday.
I have also since confirmed Boerries’s departure with company insiders familiar with the situation.
In a post on Monday on a restructuring at Yahoo that new CEO Carol Bartz is likely to unveil to the company this week–sources tell me it is now set to be announced internally tomorrow–I noted that Boerries was one of the more likely high-level execs to go.
“With a very heavy heart I have to tell you, that I will be leaving Yahoo!,” Boerries wrote, attributing his departure in an email titled “Personal Update,” to issues related to his family.
On Friday, BoomTown first reported that new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is likely to be announcing a sweeping new management structure soon, which can only mean the possibility that some existing top execs are likely to be broomed out, even as some new ones are ushered in.
“This is going to be a full-scale peanut butter recall,” joked one exec, referring to the infamous “Peanut Butter Manifesto,” which was sent around the company several years ago by former exec Brad Garlinghouse. It laid bare the problems at Yahoo, most especially a decided lack of decision-making and lugubrious levels of managers.
Here is the sticky skinny.
Several sources inside and outside Yahoo told BoomTown that new Yahoo CEO, Carol Bartz–whom some Yahoos have dubbed “Hurricane Carol”–could be ready to announce a major reorganization of its management structure as early as next week, most likely on Wednesday.
While that shift could be pushed out a week or two or rolled out in pieces, Yahoo execs are nervously awaiting the moves by Bartz to put a new regime in place in order to more easily power through a massive reset of the troubled company.
While many top execs are very much in the dark about what Bartz will do, most expect her to severely roll back a variety of previous reorganizations in favor of a more accountable C-level-style set-up, with execs like a COO, CTO and a new, more powerful CMO (who will also head PR), all reporting to her.
Will Yahoo’s media properties fall flat with sweeping new changes that are afoot that will drastically change the way the company bakes its content offerings?
Or will the ability to have a single, highly scaleable, centrally developed architecture make the media programming Yahoo delivers more responsive and flexible in the era of fast-twitch bloggers (all while cutting costs)?
According to many sources inside and outside the company, product development for Yahoo’s heavily trafficked media operations–including its powerful News, Finance and Sports sites–is set to be moved under Ash Patel, who is EVP of the company’s Audience Product Division.
Today, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has convened a two-day offsite of its managers, to bring them all together to talk about the company.
Aside from a colorful all-hands meeting she has held with the whole company, the gathering is Bartz’s first major one of its top execs, sources said, and is being held on Yahoo’s campus in Sunnyvale.
Sources said they believe Bartz has prepared an organizational structure that she will unveil soon, but has not told Yahoo’s senior staff what will be shifted, what will be consolidated and what will perhaps be cut.
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.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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