Yahoo management is likely to undergo a major restructure next week,
according to industry sources.
The firm's new chief executive, Carol Bartz, would make the sweeping changes
in order to better position the firm following her predecessor Jerry Yang's
difficult period of tenure.
Under Yang's leadership and the management structure he put in place, Yahoo
experienced a continuing decline against Google in search market share, swinging
share prices caused by a failed Microsoft acquisition attempt and collapse of a
Google search deal that would have brought the company a significant increase in
revenue.
Bartz was chosen to lead Yahoo mainly due to her
proven
track record of driving growth while she was chief executive of Autodesk.
For example, between 2002 to 2006, she lifted the software design firm's
revenues from $285m to $1.523bn (£195m to £1.04bn).
The rejig is likely to take place on Wednesday and could be either pushed out
in a couple of weeks or rolled out in phases, according to the Wall Street
Journal's affiliated blog, All Things Digital.
Sources told the blog's co-editor, Kara Swisher that Bartz is planning to
enforce a more "traditional" structure on Yahoo, similar to the one she employed
at Autodesk, which will be a significant change from the employee structure Yang
put in place.
"Most expect Bartz to do a C-level style set-up, with executives like a chief
operating officer, chief technology officer and also a new, more powerful chief
media officer (who will also head PR), all reporting to her," said Swisher.
Swisher cites her sources as several top executives inside Yahoo, a number of
company outsiders, and a memo that Bartz wrote to staff last week to tell them
they had a "big week" ahead of them.
"Yahoo execs are nervously awaiting the moves by Bartz to put a new regime in
place, in order to more easily power through a massive reset of the troubled
company," said Swisher.
The restructure would follow a number of senior executives
leaving
Yahoo for Microsoft, including Larry Heck, Yahoo's vice president of search
and advertising sciences at Yahoo Labs, and Qi Lu, Yahoo's vice president of
engineering for search and advertising.
But the news would follow a week of celebrations for the firm.
Market research from ComScore revealed that in the month of January Yahoo had
increased its market share in the US search market by 0.5 per cent, while its
biggest rival Google faced a 0.5 per cent decrease in share. Yahoo also launched
a new programme for advertisers designed to further increase its revenue called
Rich Ads In Search, which will let advertisers put images, video and location
information into adverts hosted in search results.
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