This is probably good news for Yahoo, not really because of the CEO replacement, but because of the board shake-up. The new board is much more likely to do a deal to sell the Alibaba, etc. assets, shrink Yahoo to something reasonable, and maybe do a sale of the US operations.<p>Also, Kara Swisher is really a good tech journalist -- you never hear drama about her being reported, but she consistently reports accurate news. I wish the rest of the tech journalism community were like that.
Now there's a real accomplishment, Thompson is gone.
What does this solve? Pretty much nothing. It's unclear to me why anyone thinks a hedge fund manager sitting in Manhattan is going to be able to solve Yahoo's problems, when pretty much no one else has or has been given enough chance to.
If it were just about him lying, everything else would have remained the same except for him leaving. But it's obviously not, as Loeb gets to appoint board members, who have media connections - but remember how having a media mogul run the company turned out last time? <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/18/news/companies/yahoo_semel/" rel="nofollow">http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/18/news/companies/yahoo_semel/</a><p>And where are the manhattan bankers and hedge fund managers calling for Jamie Dimon's resignation after the disasterous 2 billion loss at JP?<p>Yahoo! had somewhat of a chance of making it, but now most likely it will be cut up and sold off in pieces. That's kinda sad.
"The company will apparently say he is leaving for 'personal reasons.'"<p>I wish companies would stop perpetuating this charade. It's rote corporate-speak and an insult to anybody that cares about the story in the first place. How about: "He screwed up. We screwed up. The best course of action for everyone involved is to wipe the slate clean and start over."?
The news was just made official.
Press release: <a href="http://pressroom.yahoo.net/pr/ycorp/233946.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://pressroom.yahoo.net/pr/ycorp/233946.aspx</a>
This is one advantage of a B2C vs B2B model. If Yahoo was a B2B company its customers would have stopped doing business with it years ago forcing an acquisition or bankruptcy. However, this really doesn't impact all those folks who have it set as their homepage/email. So it can weather storm after storm.
the hilarious thing, is that all the angst and pain is about about Stonehill college: collegeapps.about.com/od/collegeprofiles/p/stonehill-college.htm<p>...with an acceptance rate of 65%, does a computer science degree even matter?
I really wonder whether Loeb hatched something with Zuckerberg after Thompson launched that patent lawsuit. Nothing on the web about this, but could Loeb be a quiet investor in FB? If so, well played.