Yahoo! boss warns of reorg ahead

'Get well-rested, because next week’s a biggie'

By John Oates • Get more from this author

Posted in Financial News, 23rd February 2009 11:10 GMT

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Yahoo!'s new CEO Carol Bartz is to announce a major reorganisation at the firm she took control of in January.

Bartz, earning her nickname of "Hurricane Carol", rather ominously warned staff in a weekly email on Friday: "Get well-rested, because next week’s a biggie."

The official announcement is expected on Wednesday and follows a flurry of activity at the company.

Bartz has already asked staff to create a list of products they're embarrassed by so management can decide whether to kill them off or fix them.

The email said: "Last week I told you we were going to have our first pass at deciding which products embarrass us as a company. Kudos to Allen Olivo and his team for worrying that one of you might leak my email, so instead he called it the 'Brand Pride List'. Whatever, the point is still important and we had a great discussion on which products to stop and which to make a lot better. More to follow…"

It has already killed off its web bookmarking service.

Yahoo! is also halting the worldwide rollout of its advertising platform APT - it will run in the US and one other country until it is working properly. The firm is removing ads from its mail service in developing markets where lower bandwidth means it is losing market share to faster loading pages. Bartz said this would cost it revenue but made sense strategically.

Bartz also revealed she'll be visiting Europe in April and intended to spend the weekend watching the "chick flicks" her husband refuses to watch.

AllThingsDigital has the full memos. ®

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