Yahoo shuffle filled with insight and clouds

27-06-2008

by The Register

Trying to become less of an organisational disaster, Yahoo has shuffled around some executives and even formed a cloud computing division.

The people who brought you the botched Microsoft acquisition bid remain in charge. So, that's chief Yahoo Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker still at the helm.

Yang and Decker's new plan of attack includes some bold moves like the creating of an "insight strategy team" and tweaks to the company's technology innards that will let it "optimise the use of data and improve coordination between product and engineering teams." Visionary stuff, right?

Yahoo will also form an Audience Products Division which will lead the company's product strategy and product management. Ash Patel, the previous head of the Platforms and Infrastructure group, will lead this new division and report to Decker. A new group focused on US activities has been formed as well. It will be run by Hilary Schneider, the former chief of the Global Partner Solutions group. And that wicked Insights Strategy team will gain a fearless leader "within the next few weeks." A chicken and egg type of hiring problem, obviously.

The Technology organisation led by CTO Ari Balogh will now work on "developing a world-class cloud computing and storage infrastructure; rewiring Yahoo onto common platforms; and creating a stronger partnership between product and engineering teams." Which makes you wonder what Yahoo has been trying to do to date.

Part of the Yahoo rewiring will include the formation of a Cloud Computing & Data Infrastructure Group.

Add all of these moves together, and you can see how Yahoo is addressing its core issue of making more money off a massive web property.

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