Yahoo reveals details of massive reorg

Creation of US region and three new teams

27 June 2008 11:02 GMT / By Katie Scott

While rumours circulate about renewed talks with Microsoft, Yahoo is going ahead with drastic changes to its management.

For the last fortnight, there have been reports everywhere of an exodus of key execs from Yahoo's board.

Now Yahoo has published details of exactly what's going on.

A lot of the release is corporate mumbo-jumbo, but the key points are the creation of a new US region; and the "centralisation" of consumer product development.

And three new teams have also been formed that will report to president Sue Decker.

First up is the Audience Products Division, led by Ash Patel who previously managed the company’s Platforms & Infrastructure group.

The second new group is the US region led by Hilary Schneider, who previously headed the company’s Global Partner Solutions group.

And last up is an Insights Strategy team will assume responsibility for "centralising and executing a common strategy for the use of data and analysis across Yahoo!".

Yahoo will name this group’s leader within the next few weeks.

The reshuffle will also see a greater focus on cloud computing technologies in the future as well as better storage infrastructure.

A Cloud Computing & Data Infrastructure Group is to be formed, with Venkat Panchapakesan in charge.

Further changes include the appointment of Prabhakar Raghavan to direct search strategy, Tuoc Luong as the interim leader of the search product team and David Ku will lead the Advertising Technology Group within Search.

"These moves accelerate the ability of our deep and talented team to build great products, grow our audiences and improve monetization globally", said Jerry Yang, CEO.

"They are designed to put us in an even better position to leverage our leading global audience and capture the opportunity we see in the convergence of search and display advertising."

No mention of Microsoft though.