Blake Irving Joins Yahoo! as Chief Product Officer
Chief Scientist Position, Held by Prabhakar Raghavan, Elevated to Report to CEO Bartz
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Apr 19, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) today announced the appointment of Blake Irving as Chief Product Officer. In related news, Prabhakar Raghavan will continue to lead innovation efforts at Yahoo! Labs as Chief Scientist. Both Irving and Raghavan will report directly to Carol Bartz, CEO. This new leadership will focus on speeding key inputs and decision making into product strategy and direction.
Ari Balogh, current head of products and technology, will be leaving the company on June 3 for personal reasons and will work closely with Irving to ensure a smooth transition. Irving will assume the position on May 17.
"Blake brings to Yahoo! genuine large scale Internet expertise from a mature company known for world-class technology. In addition, Prabhakar has invaluable technological insights and expertise that I look forward to having my executive team hear more directly," said Bartz. "With leaders like Blake and Prabhakar, I am confident that we will increase technological innovation and deliver against our vision to be the center of people's online lives."
"Yahoo! has an impressive product and technology portfolio that has provided unparalleled value to its customers at scale," said Irving. "I look forward to working with the team to bring forward more unique and highly personal experiences to Yahoo! consumers, deliver on the company's promise of Science, Art and Scale to Yahoo! advertisers, and develop the amazing talent at the company so we may continue to deliver more and faster innovations to the market."
As Chief Product Officer, Irving will lead the company's products organization, which is responsible for the vision, strategy, design and development of Yahoo!'s global consumer and advertiser product portfolio.
Irving was most recently a professor at Pepperdine University's Graziadio School of Business and Management in Malibu, California. In his prior role as corporate vice president of the Windows Live Platform group, Irving led a team of 4,000 to build and operate Microsoft's Internet-scale services platform, advertiser and developer ecosystem. Irving also held a variety of development and general management positions at Microsoft.
Before joining Microsoft, Irving held development and product marketing management positions at Xerox Corp., Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd. and Compaq Computer Corp. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from San Diego State University and a Master's degree in business administration from Pepperdine University.
Raghavan joined Yahoo! in 2005, and serves as Chief Scientist and head of Yahoo! Labs. Raghavan's research priorities include text and web mining, and algorithm design. Prior to joining Yahoo!, Raghavan was the chief technology officer at Verity and held a number of technical and managerial positions at IBM Research. He is a consulting professor of Computer Science at Stanford University and former editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Association of Computing Machinery. He has co-authored textbooks on algorithms and information retrieval, more than 100 papers and holds a dozen patents. Raghavan received his PhD from Berkeley and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, as well as a fellow of the ACM and of the IEEE.
About Yahoo!
Yahoo! attracts hundreds of millions of users every month through its innovative technology and engaging content and services, making it one of the most visited Internet destinations and a world-class online media company. Yahoo!'s vision is to be the center of people's online lives by delivering personally relevant, meaningful Internet experiences. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit pressroom.yahoo.com or the company's blog, Yodel Anecdotal (yodel.yahoo.com).
Yahoo! is the trademark and/or registered trademark of Yahoo! Inc.
All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
SOURCE: Yahoo! Inc.
Yahoo! Inc.Mojgan Khalili, 408-349-7482
mojgan@yahoo-inc.com
Meagan Busath,
408-349-364
8meaganb@yahoo-inc.com
Showing posts with label pr. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pr. Show all posts
Monday, April 19, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
AP Renews Licensing Deal With Yahoo, Not Yet With Google
Yahoo has renewed its licensing deal with the Associated Press to post articles from the global wire service on Yahoo Web sites, the companies said on Monday.
The agreement contrasts with the state of similar negotiations between the AP and Google, which have apparently either stalled or not progressed according to schedule, leading Google to stop hosting AP stories on its Google News Web site.
"Yahoo has been an excellent partner for 12 years and has always recognized the value and importance of original, authoritative news. We are pleased Yahoo and AP will continue that valued relationship," AP spokesman Paul Colford said in an e-mailed statement.
"AP looks forward to deepening its partnership with Yahoo as we and our members explore new opportunities and new ways to engage with audiences," Colford added.
Meanwhile, Yahoo said AP articles are "an important part" of its effort to provide Yahoo visitors with comprehensive and relevant content. "We look forward to continuing our long-standing partnership with AP for many years to come," Yahoo spokeswoman Dana Lengkeek said via e-mail.
The AP and Google apparently are having a harder time coming to an agreement to renew their deal, which was announced in August 2006 but signed several months earlier. On Jan. 12, a Google spokesman said via e-mail that Google still had a licensing agreement with the AP but that it had stopped publishing AP stories on Google sites. On Monday, the spokesman said the situation remained the same.
News reports have speculated that the Google-AP deal is winding down and the renewal negotiations have stalled. The AP didn't respond to a request for comment about its negotiations with Google. An AP story on Monday stated that the news wire is in ongoing negotiations not only with Google but also with Microsoft.
The AP deal has allowed Google to post the full text of AP articles in Google News, instead of simply linking to AP stories on other Web sites.
Google's relationship with news organizations has often been tense. Publishers regularly grumble that Google is a parasite, indexing their content and linking to it from its regular search results and from Google News, without paying and without permission, while benefitting financially.
Google defends its practice of publishing headlines linked to news articles on external Web sites by saying that the fair use principle allows it. Google also often publishes short text snippets and thumbnail images along with the linked headlines.
Some publishers see great value in having their content linked to in Google News, because they can benefit from the Web traffic and monetize it through online ads.
However, the ad revenue of newspapers and magazines has dropped dramatically in recent years as marketers shift significant portions of their budgets to the Web and specifically to Google, creating resentment in the publishing industry.
In particular, wire services such as the AP and Agence France Presse see much less value in news aggregation sites like Google News. Wire services aren't as interested in having people visit their Web sites. The AP and AFP make money from licensing their content to publishers, so they are very protective of how their stories are used.
In fact, the AFP sued Google for copyright infringement in 2005 over Google's practice of linking to AFP stories published by other Web sites, namely newspapers that subscribe to the AFP content.
The case was settled out of court two years later, when Google agreed to sign a formal licensing agreement with the AFP that allows Google to post the full text of the French news agency's stories, similar to its deal with AP.
The agreement contrasts with the state of similar negotiations between the AP and Google, which have apparently either stalled or not progressed according to schedule, leading Google to stop hosting AP stories on its Google News Web site.
"Yahoo has been an excellent partner for 12 years and has always recognized the value and importance of original, authoritative news. We are pleased Yahoo and AP will continue that valued relationship," AP spokesman Paul Colford said in an e-mailed statement.
"AP looks forward to deepening its partnership with Yahoo as we and our members explore new opportunities and new ways to engage with audiences," Colford added.
Meanwhile, Yahoo said AP articles are "an important part" of its effort to provide Yahoo visitors with comprehensive and relevant content. "We look forward to continuing our long-standing partnership with AP for many years to come," Yahoo spokeswoman Dana Lengkeek said via e-mail.
The AP and Google apparently are having a harder time coming to an agreement to renew their deal, which was announced in August 2006 but signed several months earlier. On Jan. 12, a Google spokesman said via e-mail that Google still had a licensing agreement with the AP but that it had stopped publishing AP stories on Google sites. On Monday, the spokesman said the situation remained the same.
News reports have speculated that the Google-AP deal is winding down and the renewal negotiations have stalled. The AP didn't respond to a request for comment about its negotiations with Google. An AP story on Monday stated that the news wire is in ongoing negotiations not only with Google but also with Microsoft.
The AP deal has allowed Google to post the full text of AP articles in Google News, instead of simply linking to AP stories on other Web sites.
Google's relationship with news organizations has often been tense. Publishers regularly grumble that Google is a parasite, indexing their content and linking to it from its regular search results and from Google News, without paying and without permission, while benefitting financially.
Google defends its practice of publishing headlines linked to news articles on external Web sites by saying that the fair use principle allows it. Google also often publishes short text snippets and thumbnail images along with the linked headlines.
Some publishers see great value in having their content linked to in Google News, because they can benefit from the Web traffic and monetize it through online ads.
However, the ad revenue of newspapers and magazines has dropped dramatically in recent years as marketers shift significant portions of their budgets to the Web and specifically to Google, creating resentment in the publishing industry.
In particular, wire services such as the AP and Agence France Presse see much less value in news aggregation sites like Google News. Wire services aren't as interested in having people visit their Web sites. The AP and AFP make money from licensing their content to publishers, so they are very protective of how their stories are used.
In fact, the AFP sued Google for copyright infringement in 2005 over Google's practice of linking to AFP stories published by other Web sites, namely newspapers that subscribe to the AFP content.
The case was settled out of court two years later, when Google agreed to sign a formal licensing agreement with the AFP that allows Google to post the full text of the French news agency's stories, similar to its deal with AP.
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