As you may recall, Yahoo recently fired CEO Carol Bartz. It was kind of an ugly parting of ways. Upon the announcement, Yahoo said it had appointed Timothy Morse Interim CEO, and that the company formed an Executive Leadership Council designed to support Morse and manage Yahoo’s day-to-day operations until a permanent CEO is found.
“The Board sees enormous growth opportunities on which Yahoo! can capitalize, and our primary objective is to leverage the Company’s leadership and current business assets and platforms to execute against these opportunities,” said Roy Bostock, Chairman of Yahoo’s Board, at the time. “We have talented teams and tremendous resources behind them and intend to return the Company to a path of robust growth and industry-leading innovation. We are committed to exploring and evaluating possibilities and opportunities that will put Yahoo! on a trajectory for growth and innovation and deliver value to shareholders.”
Today, Business Insider, whose own CEO Henry Blodget proposed that Yahoo buy his company and appoint it CEO, is reporting that former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is currently in control at Yahoo. A snippet from the report from Nicholas Carlson says:
Jerry Yang – who is at once a beloved cofounder and a hated former CEO – has reinserted himself at the top.
One source close to Yahoo says Yang has “essentially” taken control of the company.
“Jerry who is essentially running the company again. He is in there running the company day to day,” this source says.
“It’s f—ing crazy!”
“How that’s even possible is bizarre after what he did to this company. How the board didn’t show him out is shocking.”
Carlson’s sources are also telling him that Yahoo board member and Akamai President David Kenny is campaigning for the Yahoo CEO job.
Despite all of the turbulence on the leadership side of things, Yahoo’s brand in general hasn’t seemed to have taken much of a hit. I’m not sure that’s the case in terms of the search industry, but Yahoo does keep talking about how seriously it’s taking search. They recently introduced some redesigned SERPs and put up a blog post about how they’re ready for a search fight.