Dec 6, 2006 11:33 AM
579
Enter your username and password.
San Francisco, 12:19 PM
Tue Feb 9
56 posts in the last 24 hours
Chief Executive Officer Terry Semel may say that Yahoo's reshuffle is a carefully orchestrated exercise that's been in the works for months. And the division of Yahoo into three operating groups, all reporting directly to the CEO, could be seen as a reassertion of personal control. But hands-on involvement by Semel is not going to solve Yahoo's problems. He's been trying to extricate himself from Yahoo with honor; this move, like adding more troops in Iraq, just bogs him down even further.
Chief Operating Officer Dan Rosensweig is the most obvious loser in the internet company's reorg. Rosensweig, a hard taskmaster but not a particularly inspiring manager of people, was in day-to-day control of a large swathe of the company. He was, before the ascension of Sue Decker, the leading internal candidate to succeed Semel. He was still trying to hold on to his job, after Brad Garlinghouse's peanut butter memorandum put management dissension in the open: Rosensweig put together a new strategy committee in response. It was not this group, one presumes, that came up with the recommendation to eliminate the COO role.
Brad Garlinghouse has won some credit for forcing change on Terry Semel. His peanut butter memorandum, an internal complaint that Yahoo was spreading itself too thin, leaked out to the Wall Street Journal. He was promoted earlier this year to SVP responsible for Yahoo's front page and Yahoo Mail. But Garlinghouse's move has been seen as a power play; it's drawn attention to his spotty earlier career; and whistleblowers, even if they're initially untouchable, usually meet nasty corporate fates. You've seen this movie.
CTO Farzad Nazem, head of one of the three groups into which Yahoo is being divided, was already in Yahoo's top management. He heads up one of the three groups that Terry Semel's created. The right move would probably have been to make the wayward technology group subordinate to product, but Yahoo's engineers, who have seen product managers and marketers come and go, remain a powerful constituency.
Chief Financial Officer Sue Decker is, at least superficially, the big winner. She takes over advertising sales, and, althought this is not explicit, it sounds as though the former model will oversee Yahoo's Panama project, the much-delayed effort to boost Yahoo's lagging revenue from search advertising. Her main internal rival, Rosensweig, is gone; but Decker was probably better off with him, weakened; the new head of product, the audience group, could be a contender.
Lloyd Braun, head of Yahoo's adventure in original programming, is out. His power dissipated, months ago. Semel kept him around out of personal loyalty, the challenge of hiring a successor to such a poisoned job — and because the CEO was so closely associated with Braun's original appointment, and the project to turn Yahoo into a Hollywood entertainment company. That script is now, as they say in the movie business, in turnaround.
Jerry Yang, the internet company's co-founder, is the only exec apart from Semel on Yahoo's board of directors. He could probably push Semel out, if he rose up in open revolt. But, says someone who knows him: he doesn't have the balls.
For more on who's up, and who's down, at Yahoo:
Jeff Weiner was Yahoo's former golden boy, the exec who led the internet media company's own search engine development, after it finally realized it could not afford to rely on Google's. Yahoo's failed, probably inevitably, to eat into Google's share of searches, and Weiner, probably unfairly, has lost a little of his lustre. Weiner also came into Yahoo on Semel's coat-tails; that's now longer such an asset. He could have hoped to head up the new product group; instead, Yahoo is looking outside the company.
Toby Coppel, a former banker with Allen and Company, came in with Semel. He's the power behind the throne. Coppel rises or falls with Semel.
Hilary Schneider, a relatively recent arrival from Knight-Ridder, runs Yahoo's important classifieds business. From the start, she reported in to Sue Decker, a sign that the CFO was on the way up, and that Rosensweig's power base was shrinking. Schneider will rise with her patron.
Does David Filo, Yahoo's other founder, still have a role at the company? Paul Kedrosky notes the omission of his name from the press release. Filo once provided Yahoo's geek soul, reminding over-ambitious producers that snappy pages trump extravagant design. And he remains a large shareholder. But Filo's long been invisible; yesterday's moves don't change that.
Contact information for this author is not available.
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
Start a new discussion