Yahoo Names PayPal Executive New CEO 45
Diggester writes "Yahoo Inc said on Wednesday it has appointed Scott Thompson as its chief executive, effective from January 9, replacing interim CEO Tim Morse who will resume his role as chief financial officer. Thompson, who was previously president of PayPal, a unit of eBay Inc, will also join Yahoo's board. Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock said Thompson's primary focus will be on the core business as the company continues its strategic review process. Yahoo has been in discussions about selling off its Asian assets for some weeks."
Oh Boy (Score:5, Funny)
We just got finished pillorying Pay Pal (again).
Now we can go after Pay Pal AND Yahoo!
2012 is looking up!
Musical CEOs (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
It sure as hell hasn't done HP any good; you'd think other companies would learn from HP's string of blunders, but apparently not.
Re: (Score:2)
I've never been able to figure out what that is, for Yahoo.
If you manage to figure it out, I'd wager they'd make you the CEO.
Signs of death (Score:5, Insightful)
Thompson, who was previously president of PayPal
I can't imagine how the past president of PayPal, a company known for screwing its customers, could possibly be a good thing for Yahoo.
Yahoo has been in discussions about selling off its Asian assets for some weeks.
Great, all you hear from Yahoo lately is "let's sell things off." When was the last time you heard them talk about creating a new product? These are signs of death.
Re: (Score:2)
In their defense, they're competing w MS & Google, MS was previously established and google has dominated the search market (gmail is good 2) almost since inception. It would make sense for them to branch away / restructure, or throw in the towel.
Re: (Score:3)
Their primary difficulty moving forward is that with the takeover attempts, and other challenges, a lot of their skilled developers were leaving the company. In early 2007 there was a mass exodus of engineers leaving Yahoo. If
Re: (Score:2)
Yahoo could have bought the google search technology for a relative pittance.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm curious why they went with the PayPal CEO? Presumably he's going to have a lot of banking/legal background, which, while possibly useful, isn't horribly useful for an advertising/search company. Then again, beggars can't be choosers when you're asking someone to captain your sinking ship...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Signs of death (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't imagine how the past president of PayPal, a company known for screwing its customers, could possibly be a good thing for Yahoo.
Yahoo is basically some fora, crappy free email, and lousy imagehosting strapped onto the side of Bing. It's a front for Microsoft, much like Netflix (which only started using Silverlight after a board seat at Microsoft was secured.) I'd say this fits in nicely with where things were going anyway. When they announced they would be powered by Bing I knew it was all over and that they had lost their last reason to exist.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually their email is not free, if they sell that off, they are going to screw a lot of paying "premium" email customers.
Then hiring the ex-Paypal CEO was the right move. He's highly experienced in screwing customers over.
And yes, it is worth paying the low price for. It is one of the last decent email services out there.
I for one don't want to be stuck to web mailers and adverts, I pay for POP/IMAP. And won't use MS or Google.
You're forgetting the best free email service: Google's Gmail. If you have a
Re: (Score:2)
And they have POP and IMAP free?
If by "they" you mean "gmail" then, yes, they have for quite some time. Screenshot [imageshack.us]
Show me an cheap EMAIL APPLIANCE I can buy that is reliable and 24/7
Oh, well since you're being so reasonable about your requirements... Allow me to remind you:
"Cheap, Reliable, Simple (implied by "appliance"): Choose up to two."
Re: (Score:2)
Though gmail's IMAP is not real IMAP, and they don't intend to fix the problems. I don't remember the issues offhand (the inventor of IMAP listed the problems on the alpine mailing list a year or two ago). These were real problems that affect real users, not just technical RFC violations.
Re: (Score:2)
Show me an cheap EMAIL APPLIANCE I can buy that is reliable and 24/7 and I will use that and forward my own domain if need be but I won't be using a free web mailer that has no POP/IMAP. EVER.
Not only does gmail have both pop and imap (better pop than imap) but you can build your own email appliance trivially. Install debian, install a MTA, install apache, slap one or more of the many webmail frontends on, done. I used to use squirrelmail but there are many others. They use IMAP to connect to the server and virtually all are written in PHP so you'll need to load php5 with the IMAP module. You can even install multiple interfaces at once since the mail stays in IMAP.
Re:Signs of death (Score:4, Funny)
It is also an example of what happens when the CxO group decides to bash on their company with sledgehammers. Or when Corporate Raiders attempt to 'help' things. It's a company that's being destroyed from the top, and all the quality engineers are leaving out the sides (or rather, have left).
Re: (Score:2)
Yahoo makes a ton of money from their e-commerce, which isn't always publicly visible, so you may not have noticed.
That has GOT to be waning, though. I can not remember the last time I found myself buying from a Yahoo store. That would be just another boring anecdote, except that I also used to find myself buying stuff from them all the time. And I have found support for this suggestion; e-commerce is the only pay service they have on Yahoo!, right? And they make money from ad impressions? Revenue is down horribly [central-e-commerce.com] so I'm guessing they're losing e-commerce stores. Sure, the economy is depressed, but that doesn't account
Re: (Score:3)
Thompson, who was previously president of PayPal
I can't imagine how the past president of PayPal, a company known for screwing its customers, could possibly be a good thing for Yahoo.
Yahoo has been in discussions about selling off its Asian assets for some weeks.
Great, all you hear from Yahoo lately is "let's sell things off." When was the last time you heard them talk about creating a new product? These are signs of death.
If companies were always keeping their course and never got rid of any business, EMC would still sell computer desks and Berkshire-Hathaway would still be in the textile business instead of printing money in Omaha...
how??? (Score:5, Insightful)
This would require that: a) Yahoo have a core business and b) Yahoo know what that business is.
Re:how??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yahoo is an online services company, they just haven't figured it out yet. When Terry Semel came on board, he thought Yahoo was a content company, and worked hard with his Hollywood background to build that out. When he failed, Carol Bartz came on board with the idea that Yahoo was an advertising platform, and worked with Microsoft to expand that offering. Without a vision of how Yahoo can provide better online services to it's end users, no CEO will be successful.
Buyer ordered to destory Yahoo (Score:5, Funny)
In related news [slashdot.org], Yahoo was sold through Paypal. The buyer claimed Yahoo is defective and asked for a refund. Paypal then ordered the buyer to destroy Yahoo.
Re: (Score:1)
Oh, come on now. That's a little excessive don't you think?
Yahoo is doing a bang-up job in regards to destroying itself, already. It certainly doesn't need someone else to wield the sledgehammer!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I liked Scott Thompson way better when he was a running faggot [youtube.com].
Re: (Score:3)
As much as I want to mod this Funny, I'll instead post here to say, watch the video before modding Troll. My first thought when reading "Scott Thompson" was his Buddy sketches, but this is definitely one of my favorites.
Re: (Score:3)
I think it was pretty obvious that Yahoo=toast 5 years ago. It's amazing they've held on for this long.
Re: (Score:1)
Go ahead and talk a
A new age of violin destruction begins! (Score:3)
A new age of violin destruction begins!
Oh, crap (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
What's all this I hear about violins on TV?
Wait a minute... (Score:1)
Could it be that the previous Paypal article [slashdot.org] about the smashed-up violin and this one are in some way related?
Perhaps...some strings were pulled.
Re: (Score:2)
*groan*
I think you forgot the "YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH" at the end of that...
Re: (Score:1)
"YEAAAAAAAAHH" is most effective when said by someone else. Besides, laughing at my own joke? Where do you think we are, a place full of highly opinionated, egotistical cads?
Re: (Score:1)
New CEO needs to fire the Yahoo Mail team. (Score:2)
Lately Yahoo Mail has been very buggy, especially when using IMAP (with mobile phone). The past few months I've seen emails moved to folders simply vanish a few days later, emails that are unreadable, emails that can't be deleted on the web site and IMAP syncing issues and the like.
The first thing the new CEO should do is replace all the people responsible for maintaining and fixing Yahoo Mail with people who are competent.
Who knows what Yahoo can do now? Even comics? (Score:2)
Perhaps they'll even be able to keep their comics pages updated, a task apparently too herculean for past (and current) staff and management.
Or maybe they'll lose the "People Magazine" focus. (Score:2)
Oh wait, "People" is a scholarly journal compared to the celebrity "news" on the front page of Yahoo. (e.g. Top 10 ways to find out if you're an idiot!)
PayPal's core business... (Score:2)
...is raping its customers.
Is that what Yahoo is going to focus on now?