After a four-month search, teetering tech company Yahoo announced their new CEO today, Scott Thompson, the president of eBay's PayPal division. Thompson follows feisty and f-word friendly Carol Bartz, who was released from her duties in September. According to Wired, Thompson "has his work cut out for him." more ›

Glorious fired Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, who was released from her duties earlier this week via a phone call, slammed her former employers in the press. Bad idea. In an interview with CNN, Bartz said, among other things, "These people fucked me over." She also told Fortune that the board was misguidedly "trying to show that they're not the doofuses that they are." Her candid talk, however, could squeeze her out of $10 million. more ›

In her first interview since being fired as CEO of Yahoo on Tuesday, colorful Carol Bartz didn't hold back when discussing her former employers. "These people fucked me over," she said to CNN. And it only gets better/worse. Here's how Bartz's impersonal firing went down. more ›

Fast on the heels of the news that front-page editor/vice president Liz Lufkin got a pink slip yesterday from Yahoo!, blogger All Things D (who clearly has an inside source) reports that CEO Carol Bartz has been fired as well. It sounds like investors have been impatient with Yahoo's stagnant stock price, and their ongoing failure to relive the glory days of 1999. more ›

Liz Lufkin, who's most recently been the vice president responsible for front-page editorial programming at Yahoo and who once upon a time co-founded SFGate, has been ousted from Yahoo in a reorg. Editor-in-chief Jai Singh, who recently came to the company from the Huffington Post, couldn't find room on his team for Lufkin, as All Things D reports. This means that Yahoo's front page, which sees millions and millions of hits a day, will likely soon be changing, and maybe getting a little less boring? more ›

In March scores of people used Google to find "yahoo," which was the seventh most searched word of the month. Gee, that's rich. Anyway, the top ten words were gmail (10), yahoo.com (9), ebay (8), yahoo (7), yahoo mail (6), myspace (5), craigslist (4), facebook login (3), youtube (2), and facebook (1). Ta-da. [via San Francisco Business Times] more ›

During the week between Christmas and New Year's, Yahoo! is furloughing most of their 13,000 employees or forcing them to use remaining vacation days, in order to trim costs on their end-of-year balance sheet. Though it's not uncommon for Silicon Valley companies like Apple and Adobe to shut down during this last week of the year, tech expert Rob Enderle notes in the above segment from ABC7 that, as a media company, this shut-down is a little more awkward than it would be at a software or manufacturing company. more ›

Despite efforts to get it removed from the internet, Yahoo!'s 2006 "Law Enforcement Investigators Guide" details the various fees that government and police officers would need to pay in order to obtain information on a user -- like access to someone's email account, which would run them $30-$40 -- and how to go about requesting it. The guide also details what kind of information is kept on users through services like Yahoo! Groups, Chat, and Flickr, and how long such information is retained. more ›

After months of tiresome foreplay -- or is that redundant? -- Microsoft and Yahoo have finally done the deed. Sunnyvale-based Yahoo and Microsoft will join forces to try gaining an edge on the market that Google snatched up with ease. The new deal goes something like this: Microsoft's new search thingamajig, Bing, will be the "exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform" for Yahoo, there's some sort of $500M revenue sharing agreement, Yahoo will handle all sales, and the partnership will last for at least ten years per the agreement. "Success in search requires both innovation and scale," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said. "With our new Bing search platform, we’ve created breakthrough innovation and features. This agreement with Yahoo! will provide the scale we need to deliver even more rapid advances in relevancy and usefulness. Microsoft and Yahoo! know there’s so much more that search could be. This agreement gives us the scale and resources to create the future of search." Today's deal, according to Valleywag, will lead to "Yahoo's annihilation." (Good luck, Carol Bartz!)
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Could the wheels of techie commerce once again be spinning? Two news items today suggest that yes, the powers that be are opening their wallets. First off, that long talked about Microsoft-Yahoo deal may be moving forward, with Microsoft execs in Silicon Valley all last week negotiating, and Microsoft now appearing primarily interested in Yahoo's search engine and advertising business. more ›

In an effort to make itself relevant again, Yahoo will undergo an extreme makeover. According to All Things Digital, "in what many sources at the company said is a major push, Yahoo (YHOO) is working on a massive plan to overhaul its brand in order to repair a damaged public image and focus consumers on what defines Yahoo." Just what that definition is these days is anybody's guess -- that is, aside from the wildly entertaining / scary Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz. The onetime internet giant, we're told, hired San Francisco branding gurus Landor Associates to help re-imagine the Sunnyvale-based portal. So, dear readers, do you have any advice for Landor and Yahoo? We're certain they'd love to hear your ideas. Let them know in the comments. more ›

Some of the largest employers in the Bay Area are being investigated by the Department of Justice to determine if they have been in cahoots not to recruit or hire away each others' key employees. The story first broke on The Deal, and now appears on The Washington Post. Sources for the Post report that the probe is industry-wide, and asserts that "by agreeing not to hire away top talent, the companies could be stifling competition and trying to maintain their market power unfairly." more ›

Ailing Sunnyvale-based Yahoo Inc. suffered yet another setback this week after "lackluster' first-quarter results were announced. As a result, anywhere from 600 to 700 jobs will be cut. This makes the company's third round of layoffs in over a year. Yahoo product managers, it seems, are most likely to get axed during this round of layoffs. At least so says Chief Executive Carol Bartz who blunted, "We sort of had one product management person for every three engineers, so we had a lot of people running around and telling people what to do, but nobody was doing anything," Yahoo cut more than 2,500 jobs in 2008. more ›

Further proof that engineers and Peninsula tech folk are scary Asperger Syndrome types from which you should stay far, far away, Santa Clara police claim that the shooter who murdered his family in a murder-suicide over the week was an engineer at Yahoo. KCBS reports that police identified the gunman as 42-year-old Devan Kalathat (nee Raghavan Devarajan). While Kalathat's wife managed to escape, he successfully took the lives of his 11-year-old son, Akhil Dev; 4-year-old daughter, Negha Dev; his brother-in-law, 35-year-old Ashok Appu Poothemkandi; his sister-in-law, 25-year-old Suchitra Sivaraman; and the couple's daughter, 11-month-old Ahana Ashok. more ›

Speaking at a Morgan Stanley Technology conference, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz fessed up to the following bit of commonsense. more ›

Former Autodesk CEO Carol Bartz, 56, has accepted Yahoo's offer to becoming their brand spanking new CEO, at least according to the Wall Street Journal. This comes after Yahoo has seen a sharp drop in its stock price, and CEO and founder Jerry Wang decided to step down from the throne. Bartz is currently the executive chairman of Autodesk. She has also been an executive at Sun Microsystems, and sits on the board of Cisco, along with Yang.
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Yahoo commences with its 1,500 layoffs starting today. Hundreds of employees were notified, with layoffs continuing until year's end. In an effort to "trim $400 million to shore up the company's finances," the Sunnyvale-based company is reducing its workforce by 10 percent. Valleywag has magically procured the transcript managers are asked to follow before showing employees the door. On the one hand, it's super creepy (DO's: "Be attentive - maintain open lines of communication; pause before continuing"); but on the other, since they have so many employees to trim in an industry filled with asperger-y types, a script somehow seems to makes sense. more ›

While Silicon Valley sobers up from last night's news about Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang stepping down, the question on techies minds today is who's next? Valleywag and blogger Kara Swisher speculates that Peter Chernin, President and COO of News Corp., is at the top of the list. Yahoo's current President, Sue Decker, is also "being considered for the job." Another stab in the dark, at least according to Swisher, is highly unlikely future Governor of California, Meg Whitman. more ›

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang announced today that he was, finally, stepping down from his role at the troubled internet mammoth. Promoted to the position over a year ago, Yahoo has seen drastic cuts in its workforce, turning down a $47.5 billion takeover offer from Microsoft, and failing to make an advertising partnership deal with Google. (The Sunnyvale-based company's closing price landed at $10.63 today -- compared to the $33 a share it say during the Microsoft offer earlier this year.) According to the New York Times, "Yahoo said in a statement that Mr. Yang would return to his earlier role as “Chief Yahoo,” a corporate visionary role, and remain on the company’s board." more ›

It was officially announced today that at least 1,500 jobs are set to get cut at Yahoo, which effectively hacks off 10 percent of the Sunnyvale Web portal's staff. This most recent set of layoffs, coupled with the 1,000 jobs eliminated in January, come as the company's third-quarter profit plummeted two thirds to $54.3 million (4 cents per share), from $151.2 million (11 cents per share) over a year ago. Will Microsoft come to the rescue? Again? Stay tuned. (SFGate) more ›

In yet another sign of the Great Depression II recession economic downturn, Yahoo is expected to announce a big, new series of layoffs -- around 15% of the Sunnyvale-based company's workforce. Last week Yahoo saw its stock plummet to a 5-year low of $11.37, with the shares entering this week at $12.90. Maybe the noble gesture of shunning Microsoft's $47.5 billion takeover offer last May wasn't so noble after all? more ›

Alas, today is "major pink slip handout" day over at Yahoo, where "police and security teams have been scheduled to provide order in case anyone goes postal." But things are getting ugly overseas as well. According to Valleywag, "the entire Dublin Finance team was laid off, to be outsourced by some place in Romania. Europe learns who gets axed [today] -- let's hope Rich Riley is among them, but unlikely as he is another Jeff Weiner - completely golden." more ›

So, you didn't like Microsoft, did you? Well, how about News Corp.? more ›

According to a Valleywag tipster: more ›

It looks like Sunnyvale-based Yahoo plans on rejecting the $44.6 billion rose Microsoft offered it earlier this month. A move that would have merged the two tech giants won't happen, it seems, and we were so sure this relationship would've worked out swimmingly. Sniff. more ›

In an attempt to slow Google's fierce roll, Microsoft made an unsolicited bid to purchase Yahoo Inc. for a cool $44.6 billion today. Gulp. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says that his company has "great respect for Yahoo, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market." more ›

Weep no more, my lady. After handing over an apology to the sobbing mother of a Chinese journalist that they helped imprison, Yahoo now must hand over an undisclosed amount to the scribes. Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao, the latter a former journalist at Contemporary Business News, will receive a hefty, unknown amount from Yahoo, Inc. The Chinese journalists sued Yahoo, blaming them for their imprisonment and torture by Chinese government officials. "According to... more ›

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos threw down some serious shade today. "While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies," he cried, shaming two senior Yahoo officials. Why? Because the Sunnyvale company named names, handing over private information about Chinese journalist Shi Tao's online pro-democracy action to country officials. (Or, as the New York Times so eloquently put it, their "complicity with an oppressive communist regime." Oh snap.) This landed... more ›