Terry Semel, CEO of Yahoo since 2001, has “resigned.” Co-founder Jerry Yang is the interim CEO, and Sue Decker has taken over as president.
The markets are happy and the stock is up sharply in after hours trading.
There is a back story here and we are digging to try and find it. The proper way for Semel to leave the company would be to announce his retirement and begin a search for a replacement. A sudden change like this signals that a lot of drama might be going on behind the scenes. This will bring the vultures in to speculate on Yahoo’s future. One article at CNBC has a bunch of potential ways of carving the company up for competitors.
It’s too early to have proper perspective on Semel’s place in Silicon Valley history. He certainly guided Yahoo through a very difficult time when he joined the company. But some observers have called him a failure from day one, noting that Google has grown its shareholder value 21 times more efficiently than Yahoo.
Yang says says some nice things about Semel in a blog post . “The Internet is still young,” he says, and “opportunities ahead are tremendous.”
We’ll see if Yahoo will be carved up or merged with Microsoft, Google, AOL or someone else, or if the company has the vision and will to push forward and find relevance again.
On a personal note, I am glad to see Semel gone. The valley will take over Hollywood. Not the other way around.
Jerry Yang has blogged about it, http://yodel.ya.../18/my-new-job/ I’m impressed at how fast news travels, it’s already front page news on the BBC!
>>FINALLY
Bye Bye!
Was way overpaid for his results or lack thereof. As one of the founders, Yang taking over as CEO should bring the company back the focus and energy they had that made them great in the early days.
It will be interesting to see if Microsoft uses this moment of weakness to pursue the acquisition of Yahoo!
So was that $70m severance?
Mike – I guess I lightly disagree with your statement about drama. Well of course there is going to be drama with a CEO ousting, but this is how it’s done. New CEO announced, current CEO gets “lesser advisory role” and then 6-12 months, he leaves perm.
If the ceo was being replaced for say some law breaking reason, then it would be a complete and immediate ousting. The way they are doing it gets a financial pop, a possible employee morale boost and Semel can leave once the news dies down.
I am sure with your pull you will get the whole story so I am anxious to get the news.
Despite Yahoo’s struggles, Semel received a package valued at $71.7 million last year.
ABOUT TIME!
How incompetent can you be before you are let go! Semel politicized the company, brought bunch of his lackeys in place to secure his seat and was not able to leverage their position in market with innovations needed to keep them ahead of google.
History should regard him as one of the worst high-tech CEOs of our time.
Well, after the “peanut-butter-memo” and Yahoo’s struggle with Google, this move was expected.
If he “resigned” I hope to god that this does NOT trigger some type of severance pay day for him.
I can’t believe a guy like Semel would leave millions of dollars on the table by simply resigning.
Why not Alex – all of the fortune 500 ceo’s get golden parachutes!
It only took 6 years for Semel to take the greatest Internet company around and make it an also-ran. Agreed with all statements above that say he should go down as one of the worst high-tech CEOs in history. But making Decker the President, dont’ really get that. Yahoo still needs that visionary leader type who is going to reinvent the culture, maybe that is Yang, but maybe not.
“The valley will take over Hollywood. Not the other way around.” Michael, you are a geek. The valley may provide a platform for Hollywood but it will not take it over. It takes two different types of people to provide technology and create content. You may want to read some books and learn about right brain and left brain thinking.
Good for Semel. Not a bad deal for $70M per year, or is it $500M in six years?
Good news for Yahoo in my opinion.
They should have done it ages ago.
Yahoo! has missed far too many opportunities.
It is about time he stepped down.
This just shows that tech companies need tech folks at the top. Look at Microsoft, Apple, Google. Yahoo has built up an impressive resume of services like Flickr, Delicious and Answers but it’s not clear how any of these help generate any revenue. I’d really like to see Yahoo remain an independent company. They were there from the beginning and they’ve got some loyal users. Make it happen Jerry!
Sadly, for Yahoo the focus of the chatter will now shift to unreal and unrealistic comparison between Jerry Yang and Steve Jobs…
Additonally, the expectations overhang for YHOO will only rachet upwards..
good riddance. let’s just hope he takes jeff weiner with him.
“The valley will take over Hollywood. Not the other way around.”
Perfect way to summarize this.
Saw this on Valleywag..and it’s a great idea. Don’t laugh.
Mark Cuban brought in to be CEO.
Think about it.
Terry Semel sucks. He can’t even do his job. Bye, bye, terry…. People say you suck… Amateur CEO…
Terry Semel sucks. He can’t even do his job. Bye, bye, terry…. People say you suck… Amateur CEO…
yeah. if you compare bubble 1.0 USD vs bubble 2.0 USD on the world markets cuban got acquired for someting like 4x youtube. maybe he can bring this gorilla back from the dead… plus itd give him a good excuse to not blab on his blog all the time about nothing
@ Igly, I disagree. If I can learn the ropes of creating content fast enough to be in the talks with tv networks as I am, being fully from the tech and media end of things, then I think anybody at Google, Apple, etc. can. Look at the guy from PayPal or Participant productions – both have made successful movies, both came out of tech. Hollywood’s having a lot harder time adjusting to our world than we are theirs
This isn’t too surprising. Yahoo! needs fresh leadership at the top to turn this thing around. Anyone know how well/not well Panama is doing?
“The valley will take over Hollywood. Not the other way around.â€
Hollywood has two groups, the Creatives and the Suits. The Creatives (actors, directors, editors, musicians, etc) will continue to thrive as the Suits (agents, executives, Terry Semel, etc) are all replaced with software. It seems like many of the Hollywood creatives are looking for TV and film work to make some cash in a dying medium while they put together their internet strategy.
I’ve always liked Yahoo. Here’s hoping this is a change for the better and that they have a chance to pull out of the nosedive. It would be a shame to see them taken over by Microsoft.
From a recruiting angle, this is just one more thing that makes Yahoo engineers low hanging fruit. I wrote about this a bit more here – http://www.thewebwar.com/?p=18 – but essentially I can’t imagine Yahoo employees feeling secure in their work environment right now. I’d be brushing up my resume right about now.
-Mary from BINC
@ Jonathan, that’s so spot on. I kind of can’t wait to see the agents go
they’re the worst to work with.
if Microsoft ever brought Yahoo… Stock would jump higher…
Terry failed…
Interesting news. More interesting news to follow later this week.
Mark Cuban for CEO.
..did he really ‘resign’ or did the board use their size 12 and give him the boot they shouldve done long ago.
i hope he’s last of the hollywood types to work in the valley who cant even be bothered with learning how to use email..
I hope that with Semel’s departure Yahoo! will now take a new direction. This is a good opportunity to move forward for Yahoo!
Thank God! If there was ever an innovative and promising major high-tech company that blew it, it’s Yahoo.
Carly Fiorina and Terry Semel – two of a pair, huh?
I’m just hoping that maybe the new CEO will turn the company around and make things that little bit better for us Internet marketers. Who knows, maybe he’ll even bring the Overture tool back?
..also, how did the Yahoo board grant Semel a compensation package over 900% above the average of other technology CEOs???
why look so sad? lol
leave your worries behind, terry – and spend a dime of the fruits of your labor to buy a small island and cchhhillll, mahn
I swear that I wasn’t involved with this. There was no Drama 2.0 going on behind the scenes.
Semel did a horrible job, but I’d love to see how an Eric Schmidt would do as the CEO of a major Hollywood studio. “You mean we actually have to charge for our content? Why can’t we just give it away for free and place small little text ads on the side of the screen?”
Hollywood will continue to create entertainment. The Silicon Valley will continue to create new distribution channels. Neither is taking over the other. It was Yahoo that recruited Semel. To my knowledge, no major entertainment company in Hollywood has brought in a CEO from Silicon Valley. That seems to indicate to me that Silicon Valley wants to be in Hollywood a lot more than Hollywood wants to be in Silicon Valley. The parties are a lot better.
I take bets:
- Larry Ellison steps in and buys Yahoo to create a powerful motto “Yahoo runs on Oracle’s Moneyâ€
- eBay and Yahoo mega-merger, and then an acquisition of the combined entity by Microsoft
- Softbank’s Masayoshi Son step’s in and brings along plenty of Japanese capital under the revived boom of the Japanese economy
Bets anyone?
http://andrej.n...e-bets-on-yahoo
More like Mark Cuban for CEO of Yahoo’s foosball team
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Think Powerset cringes at the thought of the CNBC article scenario of Yahoo outsourcing it’s search to Google if Fox hands over MySpace for a stake in the company? Seriously, that would kill any hopes of anyone overtaking Google as the top search engine. Not to mention that Google provides the ads for MySpace, think Fox will push for sometime of Google integration into Yahoo? That is crazy powerful but I doubt that could happen.
About time…now lets get that stock rock’n and roll’n
Now it’s time for Meg Whitman to leave eBay and set that property free as well.
Does anyone actually remember the shape that Yahoo was in BEFORE Semel showed up? It was awful.
I’m not saying I love the guy, but holy short term memory people.
I disagree that the Valley will “take over” Hollywood, or vice versa. And, frankly, I can’t see why either of those outcomes would be desirable. While it’s very real to some, the us vs. them approach seems counterproductive for everyone.
“To my knowledge, no major entertainment company in Hollywood has brought in a CEO from Silicon Valley. That seems to indicate to me that Silicon Valley wants to be in Hollywood a lot more than Hollywood wants to be in Silicon Valley. The parties are a lot better.”
Disney almost brought in/back Meg Whitman . . .