Yahoo shakes up its management

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Hoping to change by reversal its fiscal slack and reassure investors, Yokel Inc. unveiled a direction inspection and repair Thursday that purposes to better its Internet merchandises and advertisement business.

The changes, expected for more than than a week, make three new groupings under Yokel President Sue Decker, who modestly increases her authorization under the new structure.

But the inquiry remained whether the reshuffle is too small too late, as the Sunnyvale Web portal seeks to struggle for control of its board and resuscitate its concern followers an aborted coup d'etat command by Microsoft Corp.

Under the plan, Ash Patel, a Yokel veteran soldier who supervises a large ball of implicit in software, will take a grouping that pulls off and makes the company's wide portfolio of merchandises such as as search, e-mail and instantaneous messaging.

Hilary Schneider, an executive director in complaint of the company's advertisement who is close to Decker, will now supervise most of the U.S. business.

A 3rd squad that ours the huge amounts of information Yokel accumulates about it users' wonts will be led by an executive director to be named later.

Kraut Yang, Yahoo's head executive, said the displacement is "designed to set us in an even better place to leverage our prima planetary audience and capture the chance we see in the convergence of hunt and show advertising."

Over the past twelvemonth and a half, Yokel have undergone respective restructurings that included occupation cuts, the riddance of merchandises deemed no longer cardinal to its business, and the going of top executive directors including former chief executive officer Dame Ellen Terry Semel. Those overhauls' failure to resuscitate the company signalings that this up-to-the-minute effort is no certain thing.

Kevin Landis, main investing military officer for Firsthand Funds, a common monetary fund company in San Jose that owned 136,000 Yokel shares as of the end of March, said Yahoo's direction had to agitate things up, given the company's predicament. But he added that rarely makes a successful corporate turnaround time hinge on a direction reorganization.

"They needed to make something," Landis said.

The restructuring come ups a small over a calendar month before a high-profile showdown with billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who have launched a conflict to replace the company's board with his ain slate of directors. Anything Yokel can indicate to as an counterpoison to its unease may assist support its lawsuit that its current board should be re-elected.

Many investors are angry that Yahoo's board failed to accept Microsoft's $47.5 billion coup d'etat bid, which would have got paid $33 per share for the company. But since the two engineering giants called off negotiation June 12, Yahoo's shares have got sunk sharply, leaving Yang's hereafter in doubt.

On Thursday, Yahoo's stock drop 64 cents, or 3 percent, to $21.37, indicating investor incredulity about the new organisation chart.

Since the Microsoft negotiation collapsed, and the planned reorganisation took shape, respective top Yokel executive director director directors have got resigned or program to make so soon, including Jeff Weiner, executive frailty president who oversaw most consumer-facing products; Vish Makhijani, who led the hunt team; Qi Lu, executive frailty president of hunt and advertisement technology; Brad Garlinghouse, a senior frailty president in complaint of communication theory products; and the laminitises of the Flickr photograph sharing service, Caterina Fake and Jimmy Stewart Butterfield. A smattering of other executive directors in Yahoo's engineering group, whose direction also was overhauled Thursday, lost their jobs, according to a individual familiar with the matter.

E-mail Jules Verne Kopytoff at .

Microsoft teams up with Kaiser

Microsoft Corp., the world's greatest software system maker, have joined with Kaiser Permanente, the biggest U.S. non-profit-making wellness direction organization, to spread out its HealthVault online medical records program.

Kaiser will offer 156,000 of its employees the chance to prove the new program, which will compound Kaiser's online wellness records with Microsoft's applications for monitoring weight, allergic reactions and other medical data, the companies said today in a statement.

The agreement cavities Microsoft against Google's Google Health programme and Web land site operators, such as as Health Records Online. Microsoft doesn't complaint for the service, which may pull more than traffic to its Web sites, said Simon Peter Neupert, frailty president of Microsoft's wellness solutions group.

Microsoft is competing with Google for a bigger share of the online advertisement market, which Microsoft states may almost dual to about $80 billion worldwide by 2010.

Microsoft renews Yahoo courtship - few details

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(05-18) 19:06 PDT --
After abruptly abandoning its coup d'etat command for Yokel Inc. 2 hebdomads ago, Microsoft Corp. said Lord'S Day that it have made a new, downsized offering to collaborate with the Sunnyvale Web portal while leaving the door unfastened to a amalgamation down the road.

Details of the proposal were vague. But the offering raises the possibility of everything from purchasing a portion of Yokel to an advertisement partnership in which Microsoft would put its advertisements on Yahoo.

Another possible is a joint venture in search, an country where the two companies have got lagged far behind industry dominator Google Inc. Inch recent years, some analysts had speculated about Microsoft and Yokel whirling off their hunt concern into a single company that they would both control.

In any case, the move reignites the wooing between the two engineering giants, which were not able to hold on a terms in the first form of their negotiations.

Now Microsoft executive directors are asking for new talks, reversing their determination to "move on" in the aftermath of their failing $47.5 billion command and jump-start their online advertisement concern without Yahoo.

"Microsoft is considering and have raised with Yokel an option that would affect a dealing with Yokel but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo," Microsoft said in a statement.

Microsoft said that there is no self-assurance that both sides will attain an agreement.

Yahoo's response was oblique other than confirming that Microsoft was uninterested in acquiring all of the company, at least for now.

Yahoo added that its board, which have been considering a figure of trades to resuscitate its slumping business, "will measure each of our alternatives, including any Microsoft proposal" while adding that it is "open to pursuing any dealing which is in the best involvement of our stockholders."

The overture to restart dialogues come ups four years after billionaire investor militant Carl Icahn launched a command to throw out Yahoo's 10-member board, which he accused of acting irrationally by opposing a merger. By proposing a slate of replacements, to be voted on at Yahoo's yearly stockholder meeting July 3, he trusts to coerce Yokel back to the negotiating table.

Although Icahn is legendary for forcing loath boards to act, Yokel President Roy Bostock responded to the onslaught last hebdomad by saying that Yokel will only accept a amalgamation that appropriately values the company.

A beginning familiar with the substance said Icahn hadn't been in contact with Microsoft about Sunday's proposal. But that doesn't govern out the possibility of the company cooperating with him later on.

Microsoft's proposal doesn't prevent it from trying to get Yokel outright in the future. That point was hammered topographic point by the company, which said Lord'S Day that it was "not proposing to do a new command to get all of Yokel at this time," but that it "reserves the right to reconsider that option depending on future developments and treatments that may take place with Yokel or treatments with stockholders of Yokel or Microsoft or with other 3rd parties."

To beef up its lagging concern and go more than feasible as an independent company, Yokel is discussing a assortment of trades with other companies, including a program to outsource some of its hunt advertisement concern to Google. An understanding may be announced within a week, according to beginnings familiar with the matter.

The possible unnerves Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer. In a missive to Yokel chief executive officer Kraut Yang on May 3, he cited a Google partnership as a major ground for withdrawing his amalgamation command and added that a trade would ache Yahoo's hereafter growing and raise serious antimonopoly issues as a effect of the No. One and No. Two hunt engines joining forces.

Ballmer's new proposal to Yokel may be aimed at disrupting the Google deal, which have already prompted an antimonopoly enquiry by the Department of Justice.

Kevin Johnson, a Microsoft president, said in an e-mail to employees Lord'S Day in preliminary to an advertisement conference this hebdomad that his company is on the route to reviving its Internet business, which have lagged financially in the human face of Google's success. He spoke of attempts to be announced this hebdomad to pass some of its online places including hunt and the MSN portal while bolstering advertisement sales.

"Regardless of the result of any new discussions," he said about the Yokel proposal, "it is of import that we go on to travel forward to beef up our online services business. The fact is that we are not where we desire to be in this concern yet and we've been in this place longer than we'd all like."

E-mail Jules Verne Kopytoff at .

Yahoo-Google ad pact raises antitrust eyebrows

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(06-12) 19:54 PDT --
Yahoo Inc. ended negotiation with Microsoft Corp. on Thursday and teamed with competing Google Inc. inch an advertisement partnership that falls in the two greatest Internet hunt engines - and raises antimonopoly concerns.

Under the agreement, Google will provide some of the advertisement on Yahoo's hunt engine and other properties, giving Yokel an estimated extract of up to $800 million in further yearly gross to support its slumping business. Yokel bes after to go on to sell its ain hunt advertisements but will expose them only when they earn more than gross than those sold by its new partner.

Jerry Yang, Yahoo's head executive, called the Google understanding a good move for his company and shareholders. He alluded to Yahoo's five-month face-off with Microsoft, which proposed to purchase the Sunnyvale Web portal for $47.5 billion and then to simply get Yahoo's hunt concern - an thought that Yahoo's board rejected Thursday.

"Clearly, it is clip to travel on, and we believe that this understanding with Google makes so by strengthening our competitiveness," Yang said.

For Google, the understanding is a major triumph because adding a spouse the size of Yokel will add substantially to its already formidable fiscal might. At the same time, it covers a blow to Microsoft, which began its wooing of Yokel hoping to win more than grip online by gaining control of Yahoo's advertisement business. In the end, Microsoft succeeded only in pushing Yokel into the encompass of common challenger Google, of Mountain View.

It's unclear what impact the Yahoo-Google understanding will have got on an attempt by billionaire investor Carl Icahn to throw out Yahoo's board at the company's yearly stockholder meeting Aug. 1. He's been pressuring Yokel to O.K. a coup d'etat by Microsoft and is less enthusiastic about a Google deal.

Colin Gillis, an analyst with Canaccord Adams, said that Icahn's opportunities of installing his ain slate of managers is less without Microsoft in the mix. Icahn didn't go back a telephone phone call seeking comment.

"This board's authorization is to present a smooth, friendly dealing to Microsoft," Gillis said. "Without a buyer, it's unlikely that he's going to acquire the ballots needed to acquire his board in."

If Microsoft makes alteration its head and win with a coup d'etat of Yokel within 24 months, it would have got to pay Google $250 million to stop its new advertisement partnership. However, the amount could be reduced depending on Google's grosses from the agreement.

A trade between Google, the No. One hunt engine, and Yahoo, a distant No. 2, raises serious antimonopoly concerns. Attorneys observing from the outside anticipate the trade to acquire a tough regulating reappraisal by the Department of Justice.

"It's a marketplace that impacts an atrocious batch of both consumers and vendors," said Saint David Turetsky, co-chair of the antimonopoly grouping at the law house John Dewey LeBoeuf and a former helper lawyer full general for antimonopoly issues. "It's going to acquire a very, very careful look."

Consumer groups, ranging from those focused on the privateness effects to some with stopping point neckties to Microsoft, already are agitating against the deal. Respective congressional commissions are expected to look into the topic, including the Senate's antimonopoly subcommittee, whose chairman, Herb Kohl, D-Wis., said in a statement: "This coaction between two engineering giants and direct rivals for Internet advertisement and hunt services raises of import competition concerns."

Eric Schmidt, Google's head executive, said that the partnership was carefully structured to avoid regulating problems, emphasizing that it is nonexclusive. Yokel could beg other hunt companies to lend advertisements in improver to Google.

The new spouses said they will wait 3 1/2 calendar months to implement the deal, even though they aren't required to make so under antimonopoly law.

A treaty between Yokel and Google had been widely expected in the aftermath of a two-week ad diagnostic test the two companies tried in April that both described as successful. Google's advertisements bring forth up 70 percentage more gross per chink than Yahoo's, according to Yahoo.

Yahoo declined to state what per centum of its advertisements will be outsourced to Google. But Sue Decker, Yahoo's president, indicated that Google makes particularly well placing advertisements next to consequences of relatively indeterminate hunt queries.

Only Yahoo's U.S. and Canadian places are included in the agreement.

The news spooked Yokel investors, who sent shares falling $2.63, or 10 percent, to $23.52 on Thursday. Microsoft's shares jumped $1.12, or 4.1 percent, to $28.24, based on investor sentiment that the company was better off without Yahoo. What's the trade

Yahoo have agreed to outsource some of its hunt engine advertisements to Google:

-- Ads from both Yokel and Google will look adjacent to Yahoo's hunt results.

-- The trade with Google will hike Yahoo's yearly gross by at least $800 million.

-- Execution is expected by the end of September.

-- The Department of Justice will carry on an antimonopoly review.

Source: Yokel Inc.

E-mail Jules Verne Kopytoff at .