Carl Icahn joined the Board of Directors at Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) in July 2008. This was shortly after Icahn highly criticized the Yahoo! Board of Directors for their negligence in making an acquisition agreement with Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT). Icahn bought and sold many Yahoo! shares ever since.

The reason why Icahn is leaving the Yahoo! Board of Directors is because he wanted to spend more time on other investments he made. “I don’t believe that it is necessary at this time to have an activist on the board of Yahoo and currently my attention is focused on other matters,” stated Icahn. Carol Bartz is “doing a great job” added Icahn.

Yahoo! and Microsoft recently struck a deal too. Microsoft Corporation’s Bing.com search engine will power Yahoo!’s various online properties including the homepage Yahoo.com. The deal is still under the regulatory approval process. Icahn owns 4.5% in Yahoo! financially based on stock.

Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is spending as much as Microsoft for their marketing campaign. Microsoft spent $100 million to reinvent their brand in order to get people to accept Windows Vista. Now Yahoo! is spending the same amount to launch a campaign called “It’s Y!ou.” The new advertising campaign was announced at the Advertising Bureau’s Mixx Expo by Yahoo! EVP and Chief Marketing Officer Elisa Steele.

It’s Y!ou is intended to focus on “My World” and “The World.” My Work will focus on an individual’s friends and interests. The World will focus on a broad interest information. The $100 million marketing campaign will also have a heavy focus on making web, news, and e-mail easier to use for current and future Yahoo! users.

“I think what happened with Yahoo is that people just decided to put a cloud over its head,” stated Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz. “Now, it’s like, if we’re going to remove the cloud, then there has to be something shiny and different. [But] Yahoo has a fantastic company, a billion dollars a year free cash flow, 600 million users around the world. When you get out of New York City and Silicon Valley, everybody loves Yahoo.”

Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) board member Carl Icahn has unloaded 12.7 million Yahoo! shares.  Now his ownership in Yahoo! went from 5.4% to 4.5%. Icahn said he was taking advantage of a window period where directors and officers can sell shares.

The sale of the shares are not intended to reflect upon the long-term views Icahn has of the company.  He said he was optimistic about the company’s prospects according to a filing.  Icahn continues to support the Microsoft and Yahoo! deal along with the performance of Carol Bartz.

Supposedly Bartz was angry with Icahn for selling the 12.7 million shares and sent out a company e-mail.  In the e-mail, Bartz tells Yahoo! employees to “get out of the sugar low – we have work to do. Stop staring at our navels, stop arguing with each other. Stop debate, debate, debate, and let’s focus on the competition.”

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) has made an agreement to acquire Maktoob.com.  Maktoob is based in the country of Jordan and is one of the biggest Arab portals on the Internet today.  The fee was undisclosed, but the acquisition is pegged to be about $75-$80 million.

The acquisition should be completed by the fourth quarter.  Maktoob.com itself will become a Yahoo! property but assets under the Maktoob Group will be rolled into a new name called Jabbar Internet Group.  Jabbar will continue to own properties such as cashU.com and Araby.com.

“With the acquisition of Maktoob.com and our investment commitment to the region, the Arab world will soon get the entire Yahoo! experience in Arabic with relevant local language content, programming and services,” stated Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz in a press release.

Maktoob started in 2000 and is in the top 10 for most Arabic-speaking countries according to Alexa.com.  Maktoob holds the number one spot in many countries too.  This will help boost Yahoo!’s market share in an area that is heavily untapped by Google and Microsoft.

Ashlee Vance and Brad Stone of The New York Times had visited Yahoo!’s headquarters to do some interviewing last week.  The two interviewed security guard Shewondia Mills and CEO Carol Bartz.  The Times wanted to learn more about Yahoo!’s company culture.  What the Times got out of the visit is a debatable quote from the recently installed CEO.

“We have never been a search company,” stated Bartz. “It is: ‘I am on Yahoo. I am going to do a search.’ ”

Bartz said that generally people only conduct a search on Yahoo! after reading a news story or watches a video on another Yahoo! service.  Yahoo! generally does not become the destination that people visit when looking for search answers.  This is why Bartz does not mind that Yahoo! has a 20% search market share.  Google has above 60% search market share.

The reason why Bartz’s claim is debatable is because I remember Yahoo! as being the first place to go for searching the web before Google became a large brand.  Meaning that Yahoo.com is what I used before the year 2002.  Perhaps Yahoo! lost their search engine market share shortly after Terry Semel became the company CEO.  Semel focused on intense M&A that drove Yahoo! away from being just known for search.

Under Semel, Yahoo! bought LAUNCH Media, Hotjobs.com, Inktomi, Oveture, Kelkoo, Oddpost, Musicmatch Jukebox, The All-Seeing Eye, Stata Labs, WUF Networks, Verdisoft, Stadeon, Ludicorp, TeRespondo, Dialpad, blo.gs, Konfabulator, Upcoming.org, Del.icio.us, Webjay, SearchFox, Meedio, Jumpcut, AdInterax, Bix.com, Kenet Works, Wretch, MyBlogLog, and Right Media.  Buying and integrating all of these companies into Yahoo! caused the company to forget about its core competency which was search.  This enabled Google to swoop in and take a huge market share chunk.

Before Google, Yahoo! was the only search engine that I knew.

[via Mashable]

I still remember the day Microsoft made a bid to buy out Yahoo! and the day Yahoo! rejected the offer like it was yesterday.  Today marks the day that the two companies resolved their differences and have made a partnership agreement.

(more…)

This past May, Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz said that the search engine company is open to a deal with Microsoft as long as it involves “boatloads of money.”  This is probably what Microsoft decided to pay because the media is going wild about a deal that the companies are planning to announce later today.  Through the agreement, Microsoft search engine Bing will become the default search engine on the Yahoo! homepage.

Yahoo! currently has about 30% marketshare for search while Google has about 65%.  However Yahoo! is the #2 most visited website in the world because of all the services they offer which include Fantasy Sports, News, Video, Music, etc.  The deal will give Yahoo! the chance to get out of the search-advertising technology platform business and focus more on its media properties.  Microsoft will manage the inventory of advertising through their AdCenter platform.

It seems like many advertising companies support a Microsoft-Yahoo! partnership because they believe that they are a less monopolistic search-advertising business combined than a combined Google-Yahoo! partnership.  The deal would still have to clear the Department of Justice.  Microsoft was highly critical of the Google-Yahoo! partnership to the government when Yahoo! rejected an acquisition bid from the software giant.

More news on this story as it develops.

Carol Bartz sent out her early Friday message early this week because she will be having knee surgery soon.  During the surgery she will be away from the office for about two weeks.  In the e-mail, Bartz is basically asking Yahoo! employees to stop sitting around and do something.  That seems like a blow to those in the company that are working hard.

And something just seems off about a CEO that will be away for two weeks but is telling employees to work harder.  Anyways, below is the full e-mail that was sent from Bartz:

Surprise! You’re getting my Friday message a bit early this week – I’ll be out for two weeks or so starting today for knee replacement surgery.

I’ve got lots to cover before I go under the knife, so let’s dive right in:

we’re going to take a new approach to my weekly emails. You’ll now hear from me every few weeks, but in-between will hear more from my staff. I’m not the only person with interesting things to say, and it’s important that you hear from others that are running the business. And when I say my staff, I mean all my staff. Even Judy. I’m sure she can’t wait to tell you what it’s like working for me day-in and day-out.

One last thing before I go. I’ve noticed that since the reorg, people seem like they’re waiting for something. I’m not sure if it’s a sugar-low or what, but we need to stop waiting and get moving. Good things do not come to those who wait, they come to those who make things happen.

Would you be motivated with an e-mail like this?

[via Valleywag]

Earlier this month, Yahoo! hired Timothy Morse as the new CFO.  Morse is the former CFO of Altera.  While Morse was at Altera, operating margins increase from 23% in 1Q 2007 to 31% in 2Q 2008.

“Growth companies and high-tech companies have traditionally been very successful in innovating the topline and finding new ways to grow; it hasn’t always been that balanced equation looking at capital and cost structure,” stated Morse at a tech conference in 2007.

Morse was able to cut costs without major layoffs at Altera.  Only 33 people were laid off last December.  Yahoo! CFO Blake Jorgensen left Yahoo! because he believed the CFO was more of a strategic position, but Yahoo! CEO believed that they needed more of a cost-controller.

[via BusinessInsider]

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz was in the hot seat at the AllThingsD conference earlier today and she was asked whether the company was still in talks with a search deal with Microsoft.  Bartz said that there can be a deal under three conditions.

The conditions were: “If there’s boatloads of money, and there’s the right technology, and the information we would have to have, then yeah….it’s that simple.”

While on stage Bartz also said that there won’t be anymore layoffs at Yahoo!  “We have the right people in the right seats on the bus,” stated Bartz.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) announced earlier this week that they are planning to cut an additional 5% of their global workforce.  In October 2008, the company had to layoff 10% of their workforce.  The announcement was frustrating for newly appointed CEO Carol Bartz to the point where she dropped the f-bomb on the conference call.

“So we had a lot of people running around telling engineers what to do, but nobody f**king doing anything,” stated Bartz.  On top of the layoffs, Bartz has to deal with decline in advertising revenues which had gone down in the company’s first quarter.

Yahoo!’s operating cash flow was $409 million in the first quarter.  The company also stated that it plans to continue unspecified non-headcount cost reductions in order for them to make investments in core operations.  The company made $1.58 billion in revenue in the first quarter which is down 13% from the year before.

[via Reuters]

Say what? Yesterday I published an article about how the Yahoo! CFO believes that the search engine company is still open to a search deal with Microsoft and today he is no longer CFO.  As a matter of fact, he is no longer part of Yahoo!  Blake Jorgensen was CFO of Yahoo! since May 2007.

Jorgensen spoke very highly of Yahoo! at yesterday’s Goldman Sachs event.  He spoke about how Bartz is taking a very decisive approach with the company.

“Maybe he said something he shouldn’t have said at the conference. Maybe Bartz didn’t care for what he said about her. Maybe this is all part of her big reorganization plan, which was supposed to be announced this week. Maybe he just got another sweet job offer after calling it a day at the conference yesterday. The filing didn’t have those sort of details,” wrote Sam Diaz of ZDNet.

On Saturday, I wrote about how Yahoo! may have a major executive shuffle according to a memo that Bartz sent out.  “Get well-rested, because next week’s a biggie,” stated Bartz in the memo.  Some analysts believe that it was foolish to have Blake speak at the event because it led investors to believe that the CFO has big plans in helping the company get back on its feet.

What are your thoughts about Blake?  Do you think it was okay for him to speak at an event the day before he quit?

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer indicated that he is interested in working with Yahoo! in a search deal when talking to analysts today.  Ballmer had a hard time working with Jerry Yang, who kept demanding more money from Microsoft to be acquired.  But now he’ll have an even harder time working out a deal with new CEO Carol Bartz.  Bartz said even at one point that she did not join Yahoo! to have it be sold.

Ballmer said he was willing to engage in a discussion with Yahoo! again, but he has been “rebuffed and ignored” by Bartz according to a CNBC reporter.  Yahoo! is currently running without an M&A executive since Gerald Horkan departed.  Horkan spent most of last year working on the failed bid for Microsoft to buy out the search engine company.  Horkan left several weeks ago and has not yet been replaced.

Bartz joined Yahoo! last month.

[via CNET]

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is currently on their third CEO in two years.  Her name is Carol Bartz and she has loads of experience with a CAD company, but little experience with a digital media company.  Bartz may announce a major executive reorganization next week.

Kara Swisher of AllThingsD reported that Bartz sent out a memo to employees saying to “Get well-rested, because next week’s a biggie.”  Yahoo! is currently under pressure for turning down a $44 billion offer from Microsoft, a failed partnership with Google, and is rumored to take some sort of action with AOL.

The reorganization is expected to revolve around the COO, CTO, and the a new chief marketing officer all report to Bartz.  AllThingsD also believes that Bartz may abandon a recent restructuring that splits Yahoo! into four operating regions.  One executive would oversee the U.S. and another executive would handle all international regions.

The company behind one of the biggest search engines in the world is poised to make you an offer.  They are worth $16 billion on paper and earned closed to $7 billion by the end of 2007.  What will they pay you?  The answer is made clear in an SEC statement filed by Yahoo!

Carol Bartz, the new CEO of Yahoo! will be earning $1 million per year before taxes and withholdings.  Bartz will also be eligible to make an annual target bonus of 200% of the annual salary based on company performance.  She will also be granted stock options of 5 million shares.  In terms of time off, Yahoo! will offer Bartz 4 weeks of vacation per year, 10 paid holidays, and 2 personal floating holidays.

The SEC document also acknowledges that President Sue Decker will be resigning and Jerry Yang will be assuming the role as Chief Yahoo! once again.

The first thing I thought of when reading this document was that this was an impressive salary to be receiving as a CEO, hired from an external company.  But then I remembered Terry Semel’s compensation…

In June 2007, Semel resigned as CEO of Yahoo! due to shareholder dissatisfaction of his salary.  In 2006, Semel’s salary was $1, but he had stock options worth $70 million.  Semel made over $500 million through his tenure at Yahoo!  Semel was granted options of over $110 million as a bonus to join Yahoo!  Semel still has another 18.6 million unexercised stock options in Yahoo!

Clearly the position that Yahoo! is in right now isn’t as good as it was before.  If Bartz is able to undo the mistakes that Semel and Yang made in the past, then I’m sure she’ll see a substantial amount more heading her way.

[via ZDNet]