Coming out from a near-escape of Microsoft’s takeover bid and jumping to a 55% inflated stock value due to the raucous, my earlier prediction missed the mark. What did happen is worse IMO — massive lay-offs and exodus of key executives.
The rumors have revealed itself and over a thousand Yahoo! employees have been given the pink slip early today. Some Twittered their imminent exit, others blogged about it.
Here’s a running list of bigwig names walking out the door:
- Susan Mernit, Senior Director, Product at Yahoo!
- Salim Ismail, Head of Brickhouse, Yahoo’s internal ‘ideas factory’
- Bradley Horowitz, Head of Yahoo’s Advanced Technology Division
- Jessica Bowman, Senior SEO Manager and SEO Evangelist at Yahoo
- Jeff Bonforte, Vice President for Social Search
- Patrick Houston, VP Content & Programming
- Randy Ksar, Brand Marketing Manager
- Subhhash Bhatia, Sr. Director
- Brad Ramsey, VP Marketing
- Ryan Kuder, Sr. Manager
Horowitz will be moving to Google and will be joining the OpenSocial initiative.
Dark days for Yahoo. My $18/share prediction is getting a second lease in life.
On the other hand, Steve Ballmer is resolved in buying Yahoo! despite the latter’s rejection of the $31/share offer. Analysts says an increased offer to $35-$36 will put enough pressure on the executive board to give in.
too bad, I for one really preferred using google as my search engine than yahoo because yahoo is full of ads unlike google’s search page and I seem to get what I want more often at Google than Yahoo.
Now if google would only try to rival Yahoo’s Messenger then I would gladly switch to that since Im starting to hate YM right now.
bigwigs getting the pink slip? now i’m eager to see what’s next.
yahoo acquired another company right? i just read that from techcrunch..
Still counting on Caterina Fake to put up a Pinay startup!
It is so sad to see Yahoo to go, I mean, they were at the forefront of the Internet boom more than a decade ago.
So going back, looking at the bigger picture, and looking at each smaller pictures, “What went wrong?” (Without blaming Google or Microsoft :p )
I know, so many to list down.
And now, the Philippines will become a solid Google Country sooner or later. Philippines = YM. Yahoo Mail is losing grounds in the Philippines already, more and more are moving to Google Mail. Last hold is YM.
And I’m sure Microsoft wants to get all the YM data.
Yahoo is going bye-bye..
I think, its do or die for Yahoo.