Can Thompson rejuvenate Yahoo?
Yahoo's choice of a new corporate head is sending a message that the company will be rebuilt instead of sold, analysts say.
Some analysts do openly question whether new CEO Scott Thompson is too much like failed predecessor Carol Bartz and lacks the skills to bring Yahoo back to its former glory.
"Yahoo has a strong brand and I believe it still has a core from which a much stronger company will grow," said Rob Enderle, an analyst at the Enderle Group. "The problem is that on paper [Thompson] appears to represent a similar mistake to the one they made with Bartz. Their ideal candidate would be someone who recently turned around a company. That's not Thompson's skill set."
Yahoo this morning announced the appointment of Scott Thompson, former president of eBay's PayPal unit, as its CEO. The company, a one-time shining Internet pioneer that slipped into B-level status, has been looking to fill its top spot since September when Bartz was dismissed.
Yahoo long ago had slipped into the shadows of online giants like Google and Facebook, but Bartz's ouster seemed to usher in a new level of trouble for the company.
After Bartz' departure, it wasn't long before the speculation began to swirl that the likes of Microsoft and Google were looking to buy Yahoo. Read more...
Yahoo awarded $610 million in spam case
Yahoo has won a lawsuit against spammers, a legal victory that also includes a default judgment of $610 million.
In the lawsuit, filed in May 2008, Yahoo targeted a variety of individuals and companies, accusing them of trying to scam people via a spam campaign that falsely informed email recipients that they had won prizes in a non-existent Yahoo-sponsored lottery.
Yahoo alleged that the defendants' goal was to trick email recipients into providing them with personal and financial information that could be used to commit fraud by raiding victims' bank accounts, using their credit cards and applying for loans on their behalf. Read more...
Yahoo simplifies developer access to BOSS search development platform
Yahoo will introduce on Wednesday several new features in its Search BOSS application development platform intended to make it easier for programmers and web publishers to adopt and use.
Search BOSS, which developers use to create custom search engines on top of Yahoo's infrastructure, will now offer a "self-service" platform for which developers can sign up online, log into their account and start using in a matter of hours.
Until now, that process was much more cumbersome, involving the drafting of a custom contract, which had to be signed on paper and submitted for approval, which in turn could take weeks or months to finalize.
"The goals we're aiming for with this self-service platform is agility, flexibility and creativity," said Shashi Seth, Yahoo's senior vice president of search and marketplaces, in an interview. Read more...
Yahoo Hub brings group messaging, free SMS conferencing to Android devices
Yahoo has entered the already saturated group-messaging market with the launch of Yahoo Hub, an app aimed at reducing the divide between traditional SMS and data-centric messaging software.
Yahoo Hub hopes to replace your existing SMS service, utilising its own platform to deliver free messages to anyone – whether they have the app or not.
Instead of requiring the recipient to install Yahoo Hub to reply and interact with the sender, the app leverages the user’s Wi-Fi and 3G connection to send free messages to friends no matter which smartphone they own (including the iPhone), allowing them to reply in the same way they would a normal text message. Read more...
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, ISPs, All Served With Streaming Site Blocking Demand
A trio of organizations representing the movie, cinema and TV industries have gone to court in France in an attempt to force Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and the country’s ISPs to block several streaming sites. The groups, which represent hundreds of video-related companies such as Paramount and Sony, want streaming sites blocked to Internet subscribers and delisted from search engines.
Following the introduction of a ’3 strikes’ mechanism targeting regular Internet users, as reported earlier this week moves are underway in France to strangle the finances of streaming and direct download (DDL) sites. Today the direction of the multi-pronged action becomes even more clear. Read more...
Ballmer feels lucky Microsoft didn’t buy Yahoo in 2008
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer feels intensely fortunate that his company's US$44 billion bid for Yahoo back in 2008 never materialized.
"Sometimes you're lucky," he said with a smile at Web 2.0 Summit, responding to a question from conference co-chair John Battelle.
Careful not to offend his search market partner, Ballmer put his comment in context, saying that any CEO would feel grateful for not making a major acquisition in the months prior to the global financial collapse that started in the second half of 2008.
"We would have been closing [the Yahoo deal right after] Lehman Brothers," Ballmer said, referring to the historical collapse of one of the largest financial institutions in the U.S. Microsoft made its offer for Yahoo in early 2008 and withdrew it several months later. Read more...
Levinsohn: Yahoo is doing fine
Ross Levinsohn, Yahoo's executive vice president for the Americas, on Monday downplayed the notion that the recent firing of CEO Carol Bartz has the company in an upheaval.
He made his remarks even as news emerged that Yahoo's chief technology officer, Raymie Stata, has just been replaced.
"Honestly, it's fine," Levinsohn said when asked how things are at Yahoo in the wake of Bartz's departure, during an appearance at the Web 2.0 Summit, where he was interviewed on stage by conference co-chairman John Battelle.
"If you've done jobs like this over the years, you sort of get used to it," he said, referring to shakeups at the executive level.
Levinsohn declined to comment about rumors that Yahoo and AOL might merge, and remained mum when asked about the process to find a new CEO. Read more...
Could! Yahoo! be! sold! to! private! buyers?
Yahoo! co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang wants to take the ailing web company out of the stock market in a deal with private equity firms, if the latest speculation on the firm's future is to be believed.
People close to the inner mechanisms of Yahoo! have been doing their thing with Reuters, whispering to the newswire that Yang fancies the idea of going back to private investment while hanging on to his 3.63 per cent stake.
Since firing Carol Bartz from the chief exec seat in September, Yahoo! has been working with advisers Allen & Co and Goldman Sachs on a "strategic review", which speculators have taken to mean some form of sale of the company or at least some of its assets.
And despite its flagging fortunes, there are a number of suitors willing to snap up the former internet darling.
Last week, Jack Ma, boss of Alibaba, told a gathering of people at Stanford University that his company would be "very interested in Yahoo!", according to Reuters. Read more...
Yahoo, ABC joining forces in news partnership
ABC News and Yahoo Inc. are joining to deliver more online news to their audiences. With the deal, ABC News content will be prominently featured on Yahoo News, the most visited news website in the world. It will also show up on Yahoo's popular front page.
The partnership comes as a growing number of people turn to the Internet for news and other information. The two news organizations have a combined online audience of more than 100 million users per month in the U.S. — something ABC News president Ben Sherwood noted was "the size of the Super Bowl audience."
While, the deal helps ABC grow its online reach, Yahoo News can drive further traffic to its own site by featuring original, made-for-online content. ABC is launching Web-only news series, starting with a live interview with President Barack Obama by George Stephanopoulos Monday afternoon. That launches a series, "Newsmakers," with online interviews conducted by the likes of Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, Katie Couric, Robin Roberts and others. Read more...
Report: Yahoo board not focused on finding new CEO for now
Days after giving Carol Bartz the pink slip, Yahoo's board of directors is focused on deciding whether the company should be sold, not on finding a new CEO, according to a report on Saturday in The Wall Street Journal.
Before starting a search for Bartz's replacement, Yahoo's board wants to determine whether the correct strategy for the company is to remain independent or be sold whole or in parts, the Journal reported, quoting anonymous sources.
Yahoo has yet to retain an executive search firm, and instead has instructed a board committee to conduct a review into whether Yahoo should be sold or not, according to the article. Allen & Co. and UBS Investment Bank will assist Yahoo with this review, the Journal said. Read more...
With Bartz out, Yahoo must refocus or die
With Yahoo languishing in the face of competition from the likes of Google and Facebook, the ouster of CEO Carol Bartz gives the company a chance to refocus and reinvigorate itself.
Yahoo announced late on Tuesday that Bartz, who had been with the company for just under three years , had been fired. Tim Morse, Yahoo's chief financial officer, has stepped into the top seat until a permanent CEO can be found.
Under Bartz's stewardship Yahoo has continued to falter. Once an Internet pioneer and online giant, the company has struggled financially. And at a share holder meeting in June, one investor blasted Bartz for the company's limp stock price and her market strategy, and even called for her departure.
During that conference call, Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock defended Bartz, saying she had made "demonstrable progress" and adding that she had the confidence of the board of directors. Read more...
Hackers may have stolen over 200 SSL certificates
Hackers may have obtained more than 200 digital certificates from a Dutch company after breaking into its network, including ones for Mozilla, Yahoo and the Tor project, a security researcher reported today.
The count is considerably higher than DigiNotar has acknowledged. Earlier this week, a company spokesman said that "several dozen" certificates had been acquired by the attackers.
"About 200 certificates were generated by the attackers," said Hans Van de Looy, principal security consultant and founder of Madison Gurka, a Dutch security company, citing a source he said wished to remain confidential. Read more...
‘IPv6 brokenness’ problem appears fixed
The Internet's biggest content providers -- including Yahoo, Facebook, and Google -- are reporting a significant decline in their measurements of "IPv6 brokenness," a term that describes end users with misconfigured systems that can't access websites supporting the next-generation Internet protocol called IPv6.
Worries about IPv6 brokenness have been a major stumbling block for content providers wanting to deploy IPv6, an emerging standard that solves the looming address shortage with the Internet's current standard known as IPv4.
Some of the Internet's most popular websites shared details about their latest IPv6 brokenness measurements at a meeting of the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) held here this week.
Experts say the IPv6 brokenness problem is lessening for two reasons: Browsers like Google's Chrome have enabled a new feature called "fast fallback,'' which identifies users suffering from IPv6 brokenness and automatically reconfigures their access to IPv4. Read more...
Yahoo revenue drops as display ad business slows
Yahoo's total revenue took a steep dive in the second quarter as it struggled in display advertising, a core market where it has historically been a leader. The company managed to increase its profit by 11 percent, however.
Total revenue for the three months ending June 30 declined 23 percent year on year to $1.22 billion, Yahoo announced Tuesday. Subtracting the advertising commissions and fees it pays to partners, net revenue came in at $1.07 billion, down 5 percent from 2010's second quarter and below the $1.11 billion consensus estimate from analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. Read more...