Mobile a top priority for Yahoo in 2013, Mayer says
Yahoo wants to accelerate its development of mobile products geared toward delivery of personalized content, CEO Marissa Mayer said Tuesday, as the company works to stay relevant in a world where smartphones and tablets are becoming dominant.
How Yahoo will accomplish that goal is not immediately clear -- it has yet to announce any specific mobile apps or services it has in the pipeline -- but it was an objective oft-repeated during the company's first-quarter earnings call.
But if the "how" is not clear, the "why" is more evident. Mobile is top of mind for all Internet firms, Google and Facebook included, and mobile will be crucial to Yahoo's efforts to increase user engagement and expand advertising revenue. Read more...
Yahoo! ‘OPTIMISES’! website! for! fondleslabs! AND Facebook!
Yahoo! has once again redesigned its website as the ailing internet company attempts to squeeze more ad juice out of its online estate.
The Purple Palace's CEO Marissa Mayer announced the latest makeover in a blog post on Wednesday that was peppered with words netizens might normally associate with Facebook.
Mayer, who took to the helm of Yahoo! after quitting her high-ranking job at Google, has slapped on the Web2.0rhea paint by integrating the site more closely with Mark Zuckerberg's free content ad network. Read more...
Will Outlook.com force Gmail, Yahoo Mail to up their game?
With Microsoft's new Outlook.com free email service getting so much attention, will Google and Yahoo need to update their own email offerings before they start to lose users?
Google's Gmail will need some updates to grab a piece of the spotlight, but Yahoo Mail needs an overhaul and it needs to move fast, according to industry analysts.
"This really ups the ante in the email game," said Al Hilwa, an analyst with IDC. "Microsoft's email may start to increase its adoption rate ... Everyone is at risk of market share changes. This is what it means to play in a competitive market."
Earlier this week, Microsoft took the wraps off Outlook.com, its new webmail service, which is set up to eventually replace the company's Hotmail. The updated service is a major redesign that synchronizes Outlook.com accounts across a range of devices and is integrated with social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Read more...
Yahoo’s embattled former CEO gets new job
Scott Thompson, who was pushed out as CEO of Yahoo amid scandal this spring, has landed a new job.
ShopRunner, an online shopping network, announced Monday that it has hired Thompson as its CEO. Mike Golden, who co-founded the nearly 2-year-old company, will step down as its CEO and act as company president.
Thompson, who had been Yahoos CEO for only five months, had been a member of ShopRunners board of directors.
Michael and I both felt he would be the perfect long-term CEO, said Golden in a statement. We are thrilled that Scott has taken us up on our offer to lead ShopRunners continued growth. Read more...
VMware cranks Zimbra collabware up to 8.0
Maybe Yahoo! should have held onto Zimbra instead of selling it off to VMware two and a half years ago. But for the sake of users of the email and collaboration tool that Yahoo paid a stunning $350m to acquire in September 2007, it is probably best that Zimbra ended up inside VMware, which is playing for keeps on the desktop as well as in the data center these days.
VMware wants one more thing to sell to service providers and enterprise customers, and it also has money to invest in enhancing Zimbra with social media-like capabilities, something that Yahoo! probably would not have gotten around to yet and that VMware has done with Zimbra 8.0, which is launched as a beta today and which will start shipping in the third quarter.
Technically, it is called Zimbra Collaboration Server and it comes in an open source flavor and a commercial network edition that can be deployed internally behind the firewall or by service providers that want to offer email and collaboration as a service. Read more...
Over 450,000 emails and passwords allegedly stolen from Yahoo
A group of hackers on Thursday published a list of over 453,000 log-in credentials on the Internet that were allegedly stolen from a database associated with an unnamed Yahoo service.
The group of hackers calls itself "the D33Ds Company" and claims to have hacked into the database by exploiting an SQL injection vulnerability found on a Yahoo subdomain.
"The subdomain and vulnerable parameters have not been posted to avoid further damage," the hackers said in their release notes.
The leaked information includes MySQL server variables, names of database tables and columns, as well as a list of 453,492 email addresses and passwords in plain text.
The exposed log-in credentials don't only include yahoo.com email addresses, but also email addresses from other public and non-public email providers. Read more...
Yahoo, Facebook settle patent dispute
Yahoo and Facebook announced Friday they have settled a high-profile patent dispute with a deal that analysts said would likely be good for both sides.
As part of the agreement, Yahoo and Facebook have signed a cross-licensing deal granting access to each others' patent portfolios, they said in a joint statement. They've also forged an advertising partnership and will expand an existing content distribution agreement.
Yahoo sued Facebook in March under the leadership of former CEO Scott Thompson. It accused Facebook of infringing patents covering technologies related to social networking, advertising, privacy, site customization, and communications. Facebook's News Feed and the way it handles privacy were both in violation of Yahoo's patents, Yahoo contended. Read more...
Revolving door: Yahoo ushers out another CEO
Yahoo still has credibility issues, even after casting aside CEO Scott Thompson because his official biography included a college degree that he never received.
The troubled Internet company's next challenge will be convincing its restless shareholders and demoralized employees that the turnaround work started during Thompson's tumultuous four-month stint as CEO won't be wasted.
It won't be an easy task, given that Yahoo Inc. has now gone through four full-time CEOs in a five-year stretch marked by broken promises of better times ahead. Instead, Yahoo's revenue and stock price have sagged during a time when rivals such as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. as advertisers spend more money online. Read more...
Yahoo to double Olympics presence in London
Yahoo plans to double its Olympics presence this summer, aiming to be the top website for the fourth straight Games.
Yahoo is sending 25 people from around the world to cover the Summer Games in London — about "twice as big" as it had in the Winter Games — including U.S. gold medal winners Shannon Miller and Dan O'Brien and many of its sports columnists and reporters. It also plans to cover the games in dozens of languages.
The move is an effort to outshine competitors. Despite not paying for exclusive rights to cover the games, Yahoo says it has been the No. 1 global destination for Olympics coverage for the past three games. Read more...
Facebook fires back at Yahoo, says it infringed 10 patents
Facebook has denied Yahoo's claims of patent infringement and shot back with counterclaims that Yahoo infringed 10 Facebook patents.
In its response to Yahoo's patent infringement suit filed on Tuesday, Facebook accuses Yahoo of infringing 10 of its patents in several of Yahoo's most popular services including the Yahoo homepage, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, and the Flickr photo sharing service. Read more...
Yahoo board battle may begin within the next week
A potentially nasty battle to reshape Yahoo's board of directors will begin within the next week unless the troubled Internet company submits to the demands of a major shareholder.
Third Point LLC, a hedge fund that owns a 5.8 percent stake in Yahoo, issued its ultimatum in a letter Wednesday to company CEO Scott Thompson.
The letter, released in a regulatory filing, comes a month after Third Point first announced that it wanted four seats on a Yahoo board already undergoing an overhaul.
The board currently consists of 11 directors, but Chairman Roy Bostock and three other members announced they will step down at Yahoo's annual meeting. The departures are part of an attempt to placate shareholders frustrated with a long-running financial funk that has depressed the company's stock price. Read more...
Yahoo, Facebook in intellectual property dispute
Yahoo is threatening action unless Facebook licenses some of its technologies, as other web and technology companies are said to have done.
The move by Yahoo puts it in conflict with Facebook with which the company has a beneficial relationship, particularly in the area of integration of Yahoo News with Facebook.
Traffic to the mobile Yahoo News web app from Facebook Mobile has increased three-and-a-half times since Feb. 14 to 1.6 million visitors a day, according to a post last week on Facebook's developer blog.
In an e-mailed statement, Yahoo said, "Yahoo! has a responsibility to its shareholders, employees and other stakeholders to protect its intellectual property. We have invested substantial resources into these innovations. Recognizing that, other major web and technology companies have already licensed some of these technologies. We must insist that Facebook either enter into a licensing agreement or we will be compelled to move forward unilaterally to protect our rights." Read more...
Yahoo in another shakeup as chairman and directors depart
The shakeup at Yahoo continues.
It was a little more than a month ago when Yahoo announced that Scott Thompson would take over as the company's CEO. The spot had been vacant since former CEO Carol Bartz left in September.
Then later last month, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang left the company.
The turmoil continued this week with the announcement that Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock and three other directors from the company's board were out as well. Read more...
Chairman, 3 others out in Yahoo board shake-up
Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock and three longtime board members are stepping down, submitting to the demands of many frustrated shareholders who blame them for contributing to the follies that have dragged down the Internet company's revenue and stock price.
The shake-up announced Tuesday continues a drastic makeover of Yahoo's leadership during the past month as the company negotiates to sell its Asian assets in a complex deal that could help ignite a long-promised turnaround.
After Yahoo hired former PayPal executive Scott Thompson as its CEO a few days into the new year, co-founder Jerry Yang resigned from the board and severed all other ties with the company that he helped start in 1995. Read more...
With Yang out, big changes coming to Yahoo?
Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang's departure this week from the company should put in in a better position to take drastic action to fix its long-running woes.
Yang has seen the company become one of the first Internet high flyers and then descend into B-level status since founding it 18 years ago next month. He resigned Tuesday from multiple positions at the firm, including his lofty position on the company's board of directors.
Yang's departure is but the latest upheaval at the embattled company that in September ousted former CEO Carol Bartz, and then dealt with speculation that both Microsoft and Google may be gunning to buy Yahoo.
Just two weeks ago, Yahoo appointed former PayPal president Scott Thompson to replace Bartz as CEO. Read more...