It’s only been a few hours since we posted the ex-Yahoo Exec tracking spreadsheet, but it’s already seriously outdated. Three more execs will be leaving, say sources close to the company: EVP Qi Lu, SVP Brad Garlinghouse and SVP Vish Makhijani.
As an aside, Jeremy Zawodny, Yahoo’s technology evangelist who announced his departure last week, has announced he’ll be joining Craigslist next month.
Vish Makhijani
Vish Makhijani, the SVP and General Manager of Search, is leaving, say our sources, to become CEO of Yandex, the “Google of Russia.” [Correction: He will be heading up Yandex Labs, not Yandex. See update below]. Yandex dominates the search market in Russia and is rumored to be going public later this year. Makhijani is a long time Yahoo exec, joining the company when it acquired Inktomi in 2002. Vish reported to EVP Jeff Weiner, who resigned earlier this week.
Brad Garlinghouse
Brad Garlinghouse is the SVP of Communications & Communities at Yahoo and controls huge properties like Mail (260 million users), Messenger (100 million users), Groups (110 million users), Flickr (47 million users) and Zimbra. Around 600 people report to Garlinghouse, who has been vocal over the last two years in calling for a significant overhaul of how the company does business. Prior to joining Yahoo, Brad served as CEO of Dialpad Communications. Earlier in his career, Brad led VC investments in communications and Internet businesses at @Ventures. He also spent time in leadership roles at @Home Network and SBC Communications.
It’s not clear where Garlinghouse is headed next, the rumor is multiple private equity firms are vying for his attention. Frankly, given his operating experience (he grew most of the properties under his control to no. 1 in their market, even as Yahoo search fell apart over the years), it’s too bad he isn’t ending up in a CEO role somewhere.
Qi Lu
This rumor has been floating around for months, but EVP Qi Lu, the EVP engineering for Search and Advertising Technology Group, will be leaving Yahoo shortly. Lu reports to CTO Aristotle Balogh. He is the chief architect of Yahoo’s Panama search marketing platform (which means his job became significantly less interesting since the Yahoo/Google deal).
Brad Garlinghouse and Vish Makhijani were considered serious contenders to take over departing EVP Jeff Weiner’s role - obviously they’re both off the table now. But a bigger concern is that there just isn’t much executive talent left at Yahoo at this point, other than CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker, who are increasingly isolated and seem to have lost the trust of all but the Yahoo board.
Update: Esther Dyson, who is on the Yandex board, e-mailed us to say Vish Makhijani is indeed joining Yandex, but as President and CEO of Yandex Labs in Silicon Valley. Not CEO of Yandex the parent company.
Update 2: Here’s the Yandex press release.
Who cares?
Is this the end of Yahoo as we know it?
Or Yahoo is trying to give new meaning to UpStart as apposed to StartUp… Starting from scratch again?
Best,
Darren Lee
http://www.adexcel.com
seen this in other companies as a prelude to sale. yahoo will be sold before 2009.
The saga continues. They’re done. Amazing how a giant can fall so quickly.
Yikes…and it seems pretty clear Mr. Yang will soon be leaving as well (whether he wants to or not). I wonder what’s going to be left of poor old Yahoo! when the dust settles.
This good be a fresh start. Maybe those execs weren’t that good in the end?
Who needs execs anyway? Suits.
Clearing out the deadwood. Looking at the histories of these people, save perhaps Qi, their skills were all pretty generic. Maybe that was the problem, and points to the possiblity that their motivations for staying in their jobs were generic as well. That is, not team players.
Wow I still remember the good ol days when Yahoo was the hottest thing out there. Now it just seems a matter of time until they crumble and try to salvage themselves with an undervalued buyout. So sad.
Peter Epstein
http://www.thewebwar.com
The bigger problem for y! is that nobody who has any executive talent will join the company, unless they replace the CEO and president. Ask any of their executive recruiters…
Wow, this is amazing. Waiting for the “I told you so” article by Michael regarding Yang’s departure.
A rapid jog to display all this (bet u can’t wait) ….
http://www.jogtheweb.com/reade.....rackId=128
I will do it all myself! I built it, I built it, someone listen to me!!!
Jerry (above),
It’s MY company, not yours. I run the show. I’m a genius.
http://www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?rta=blog
And I will control all of the postings on the blog, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! It’s mine all mine.
Just close you eyes and replace Tony Montana with Jerry Yang in the final scene of Scarface.
Does anyone work t Yahoo! anymore?
This is just too brutal to watch!
Where the hell are the visionaries? This is the perfect timing to make a name for yourself as part of Yahoo! ‘revitalization’ strategy. Yahoo! is in dire need of the spirit your find in valley entrepreneurs. if only they open their arms and let people know how much they need new fresh talent
You have to wonder about the motives and the loyalty of those ’sources’ who constantly break these stories to Techcruch and others
Why motivates them?
These leaks aren’t helping their company. Do they have unresolved issues with the leadership.
This is actually good imo, that the executives who were so entrenched for so long, are finally leaving. bring in some fresh blood who are willing to take risks and shake things up.
Yahoo executives lost all credibility in my mind, when one of their own, penned a ridiculous ‘peanut butter manifesto’ and still kept his job.
Brad has operating experience - he was the most clueless when it came to operations. Brad passed on Flickr - it was Bradley Horowitz in Search who bought Flickr (see “Flickrization of Yahoo! article in Business 2.0).
Mail’s acquisition of OddPost and roll out of Mail 2.0 was a disaster - late rollout and poor performance, one of the reasons for acquiring Zimbra.
Yahoo! bought Dialpad for the VoIP, PC-to-POTS solution, than gave up and has a partnership with Jahjah now.
Groups has not been seriously overhauled since its acquisition back in 2000, and is seeing migration to Web 2.0 companies like Ning.
Brad is the second-to-last person I would not want to be CEO of an Internet company, the first being Yang.
@PR NY… “Do they have unresolved issues with the leadership.”
That’s a stupid question. If I was a vested employee and saw management piss all over that sweet MS deal I’d do everything I could to bring about the dethroning of Jerry Yang.
They are releasing a new domain “ymail” now makes me think, should i really register at ymail as it will any way be going down, few months from now…
Hmmmm…
Cheers, Nag
Hello,
I am looking for co-founder for my project (something like semantic search engine)
If anybody interesting, please, write to hudvin@nevilon.com
This should have happened a year ago. Now Claudius is cleaning out the palace.
yahoo will be the next excite.com or lycos.com……….
haaaahahahahahah hahaahaha
oh, and even when all these ‘talented people’ leave.. .the company will still run, they wont notice a difference if these paper pushers are there or not.
Brad is finally out? I might actually consider going back to work for Yahoo! now… Too bad there’s still too many useless middle managers to actually get anything done.
@John
You are 100% correct. C&C has been a mess under Brad. Mail is doing anything but growing, Mail 2.0 (aka Candygram) has been moving at a glacial pace and is a mess. Messenger was making great progress under Bonforte but his genius and Brad’s I think I’m smart attitude didn’t mesh well - a lot like that of Speiser, Butterfield, etc. Oh and Zimbra under Y! is doing oh so well…
@Arrington
How in the world could you possibly think Brad is CEO material? You clearly have “brad fans” as sources. The majority of Y!’s don’t think he’s anything but a backstabbing, politicking moron.
Also, it’s not too difficult for him to take credit for Mail growth, since when he joined there was limited competition and the Y! rocket engines were firing on all burners.
@20
Amen
My understanding is that Brad is completely clueless spoiled child commuting back and forth on a private jet to Los Angeles.
Is there anybody left to take a bullet at Yahoo? When is the Facebook merger being announced?
@2, etc:
Please explain to me how Yahoo! is dead when they’re still the most visited website in the world. Or how they’re the #1 mail platform in the world. Or the #1 sports site. Or news.
These VP’s have been working with Yahoo for 6-7 years.They should have been fired long back due to non performance.
Maybe Yahoo shall hire newer /nimbler executives as they were all nothing but expenses to the company.Also Jerry Yang should leave
In my opinion, it’s a good thing that these execs are leaving the company, time for some new blood and new strategies. Yahoo still has a chance at coming back if the new execs know what they are doing.
Dang Yahoo! how can a company go from so high to so low like this. They still have so many things to offer I use there site everyday for so much more than searching.
@The Hater
I totally agree with you
Yahoo is very much alive, although in certain areas(search) they will need to rethink their strategies going forward.
Here’s an idea:
(1) Facebook IPO’s to get an acquisition currency and cash
(2) Facebook buys Yahoo! for stock
The reach of Yahoo! and their substantial access to information would be a really nice fit for Facebook’s social network. Facebook is accumulating great pools of talent and obviously dominates social networking, but could use the top viewed website and is seriously short on extra-network content (i.e., content that is not generated within their network via things like the news feed).
Merging the social-network graph with the information of a combined Yahoo! and Facebook, would give them a technical advantage in search. That could be leveraged into something that provides a very serious threat to Google.
Obviously not an overnight plan, but maybe something that unfolds over the next 12 months.
And the exodus begins … too bad Facebook’s “pre-ipo” paper isn’t looking too glittery either.
@21
“That’s a stupid question. If I was a vested employee and saw management piss all over that sweet MS deal I’d do everything I could to bring about the dethroning of Jerry Yang.”
Yeah, I mean it’s not like they’re trying to protect their own image or anything. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
They’re just genuinely pissed off at their CEO.
I just got mail from Yahoo.com that they are increasing their domain registration price to $34.95 per domain. Look like they are in business suicide mission and they will take all possible steps to achieve that.
Glad to see them go. Like many high-tech companies you get these so-called senior execs who are more interested in their own careers than the company they work for. They are completely interchangeable. At least Yang thinks cares about Yahoo, as misguided as he is. Now Yahoo needs a new CEO with a clear vision to lead, a clean-out of middle-management, and lean, reinvigorated software and product development teams.
@37
http://smallbusiness-domain.com/yahoodomains
Confirmed as FUD. I bet Yang is 2nd guessing himself now. Some solidarity would have helped. I guess that is the back stabbing nature of the corporate world.
qi is a freaking machine. i respect him a lot. the other two are roadkill.
Well, it’s Yang’s baby and it was tough to him to let it go to MS…
Too bad he did not think about the others whom his decisions/ambitions would hurt, like his employees and stockholders.
Too bad for Yahoo!
It’s official!
Yahoo is a disaster! People can talk all they want about Yahoo’s promise in various areas but none of it matters. They are toast!
Just go ahead and change the name of this blog to YahooCrunch. Isn’t there anything else happening in tech?
Surely someone’s noticed that even with the help of all these “brilliant” execs, yahoo started tanking. Now that they are jumping ship everyone is worried about how the company will do? Maybe they *needed* to clean house.
good news for yahoo. it’s time for new blood. what amazes me though is how execs who clearly didn’t perform at yahoo are wined and dined by vcs, chosen as ceos, and given the royal treatment. the inability of yahoo to compete with google and boost its share price over the last couple of years is a black mark on all of them.
Good job Arrington! Your incessant shilling for M$ has helped crumble the already shitty Yahoo management - now all the talentless fucks are leaving, and you must be rubbing your palms in anticipation of that big check from ballmer.
You’re a disgrace - if you actually were a journalist you’d be fired for ethics violations, but in fact you’re simply a PR business, blogger for hire.
“Just go ahead and change the name of this blog to YahooCrunch. Isn’t there anything else happening in tech?”
Yeah, there are 400 new Twitter clones, a couple new photosharing sites, a few feed related things, and oh yeah Twitter is down.
You don’t think that one of the big pioneers of the internet world hiring back their old CEO for an epic fail is newsworthy?
Garlinghouse is a joke. If I am Yang, I’m rooting for more of these talking heads to leave to clear the way for some real innovation.
Arrington shows his hand by publishing constant leaks from Garlinghouse then touting him as a visionary success. In fact, yea olde PB memo was a stupid rehashing of what every employee at Yahoo knew already - so much for vision. As for success, either you’re lying as payback for the corporate espionage or simply don’t know how to read stats. Garlinghouse is a miserable failure - products he oversaw either never integrated (wasting tens of millions) or had a flat growth curve ever sine he arrived on the scene.
Garlinghouse is a Michael Scott, and I guess that’s fine with TechCrunch because so is Michael Arrington.
People are criticizing Yoono for having way too many VP’s and that they need to trim down, but when unpopular VP’s leave the same people jump on Yahoo for not being able to hold on to them. It’s one or the other folks. This should be a great opportunity for fresh blood and new ideas at Y!