Stop Online Piracy Act is a bill that was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in October 2011 by Lamar Smith (R-TX). This Act would allow the Department of Justice and copyright holders to seek court orders against websites accused of copyright infringement that would prevent online ad networks and payment facilitators from doing business with those websites. Opponents in this bill believe that this is Internet censorship. Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, and Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang oppose the bill. Their letter will appear as a paid ad in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other newspapers.

A consortium of investors that are being led by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Silver Lake are submitting a plan to buy a minority stake in Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO). TPG Capital is another company that will be making a proposal for Yahoo! Both of these proposals would lead to taking a stake of around 20% of the company.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) co-founder Jerry Yang said today that the company board of directors is considering multiple options about what to do with the company. “The intent going in is not to put ourselves for sale,” said Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang at the AsiaD conference. “The intent is to look at all the options.” Yahoo! is made of three components: Its core business, Yahoo! Japan (Softbank), and its share in Alibaba.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) recently fired CEO Carol Bartz. To explain the decision made by the board, Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang sent out a memo to employees explaining what has been happening at the company. The memo indicates that Yahoo! hired Allen & Company to field “inquiries from multiple parties that have already expressed interest in a number of potential options.” Below is the memo:

Carol Bartz has been fired from Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) by Chairman Roy Bostock over the phone. Yahoo! EVP and CFO Tim Morse has been appointed the interim CEO as Bartz departs. Shortly after the firing took place, Yahoo! co-founders David Filo and Jerry Yang sent out the memo below:

DotCloud is a platform-as-a-service company that has raised $10 million in Series A. Ron Conway and Chris Sacca was the company’s angel investors. Investors in the Series A round includes Benchmark Capital and Trinity Ventures. Jerry Yang (Yahoo! co-founder), Marc Varstaen (Apple engineering manager), Peter Fenton (Benchmark Capital), Dan Scholnick (Trinity Ventures) will be joining DotCloud’s board of directors. DotCloud allows developers to build applications through custom components.

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]

Carol Bartz, former CEO of Autodesk Inc. has accepted an offer to become CEO of Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO).  Sixty year old Bartz will be taking the position that was formerly held by Jerry Yang.  Yang was looking for a CEO to replace him for the last two months.

Some of the issues that Bartz will have to deal with as CEO is market share loss from Google Inc., multiple deals landing on the table that includes the breaking up of Yahoo!, a potential merger with AOL, and a declining stock price.

Bartz is known to be a very tough CEO.  She pushed for professional management practices at Autodesk and tame the culture set by John Walker, founder of the company.  When Bartz stepped up as CEO of Autodesk in the 1990s, the company was bringing in $350 million.  In 2006 when Bartz stepped down, Autodesk was bringing in about $1.6 billion.

Although Bartz has very little experience on the Internet, “Maybe that would be a good thing for Yahoo! right now,” stated Seth O. Harris Jr., an EVP and high tech recruiter at Cook Associates.  Employees may be looking for someone with strong operational experience.  Yang was a bit of an emotional CEO, thus the reason for turning down the Microsoft offer.  And Terry Semel, the CEO before Yang, was too much of a glamorous deal maker.  It’s about time Yahoo! becomes more operational efficient.