Revolving Door: Yahoo Ushers Out Another CEO
Yahoo still has credibility issues, even after casting aside
CEO Scott Thompson because his official biography included
a college degree that he never received.
The troubled Internet company’s next challenge will be
convincing its restless shareholders and demoralized employees
that the turnaround work started during Thompson’s tumultuous
four-month stint as CEO won’t be wasted.
It won’t be an easy task, given that Yahoo Inc. has now gone
through four full-time CEOs in a five-year stretch marked by broken
promises of better times ahead. Instead, Yahoo’s revenue and stock
price have sagged during a time when rivals such as Google Inc. and
Facebook Inc. as advertisers spend more money online.
Yahoo’s hopes are now resting on Ross Levinsohn as its interim
CEO. Levinsohn had a successful stint running Internet services
within Rupert Murdoch’s media empire at News Corp. before one of
Yahoo’s former CEOs, Carol Bartz, hired him in November 2010 to
help her in her mostly fruitless attempt to fix the company.