Yahoo! Shakes Up Top Management

Pia Sarkar

06/26/08 - 02:54 PM EDT

SAN FRANCISCO -- Yahoo!(YHOO Quote - Cramer on YHOO - Stock Picks) disclosed on Thursday an extensive reorganization of its top management that coincides with a string of recent departures by key executives.

The tech giant said it is creating three new teams that will report to President Sue Decker, including an audience products division, which will assume responsibility for company-wide product strategy and management, led by Ash Patel; a U.S. region in charge of bringing products to market for users in the U.S., led by Hilary Schneider; and an insights strategy team that will centralize the use of data and analysis across Yahoo!, led by a yet-to-be named executive.

"These moves accelerate the ability of our deep and talented team to build great products, grow our audiences and improve monetization globally," said Yahoo! Chief Executive Jerry Yang in a statement. "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."

Yahoo! said it will also expand its cloud computing capabilities by creating a team that will develop an infrastructure that balances scale with cost effectiveness. Additionally, the company named Prabhakar Raghavan as head of its search group, and Tuoc Luong as interim leader of its search product team.

The changes come as Yahoo! continues to lose some of its top talent, including Jeff Weiner, executive vice president of Yahoo!'s network division; Qi Lu, executive vice president for the search and advertising technology group; and Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, the co-founders of photo-sharing site Flickr.

Yahoo! has not commented on any specific departures, but characterized the exodus as "attrition that's to be expected in the Internet industry."

A cloud of uncertainty has hung over Yahoo! for quite some time, but it has been exacerbated in recent months by the on-again, off-again discussions with Microsoft(MSFT Quote - Cramer on MSFT - Stock Picks) about a possible merger.

Microsoft says it is no longer interested in the merger, and Yahoo! revealed a couple of weeks ago that it has rejected the software giant's bid to buy its search business, a decision it defended in a letter to shareholders on Wednesday.

Shares of Yahoo! were down 2.4%, or 53 cents, to $21.48 in recent trading.