It all began with Thompson’s embellished resume. The discovery of the inaccuracies was made by a Yahoo activist investor known as Dan Loeb. He claims that Thompson declared in his resume that he graduated from Stonehill College back in 1978 and he earned a degree in computer science and accounting. Though the degree in accounting is authentic, Thompson’s computer science degree has been obviously fabricated as the school has started to offer it only after five years when Thompson graduated.

In a vain attempt to explain the resume controversy, Thompson blamed a headhunting firm as being the culprit when he landed a job at eBay in the mid-2000. The firm immediately responded by offering Yahoo a copy of the botched resume with the fake degree which was submitted to them by Thompson.

Yahoo has decided to let go of Thompson after seeing how he handled the error and how many of its engineers, staffers, and high-ranking executives have called for his removal. Perhaps, the company didn’t buy Thompson’s labeling the mistake as an “inadvertent error” and couldn’t understand why Thompson didn’t apologize for committing such mistake which he desperately described as a form of “distraction.”

The former PayPal president, Thompson acquired his post on January 4. Two months later, he spearheaded the move negatively labeled as “patent trolling” against Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook for Yahoo patents infringement. It was a tumultuous event considering that such move happened on the eve of Facebook’s planned $100bn initial public offering.

Yahoo’s move to fire Thompson seems like a déjà vu when the company also fired former CEO Carol Bartz in September last year. When Bartz entered the firm in January 2009, its shares were reportedly trading for roughly $12. When the news about her leaving broke, the shares have jumped higher than 6% in after-hours trading to reach $13.72, from a near $12.91 on the Nasdaq. In January 2000, Yahoo’s shares each traded higher than $125.

Yahoo’s head of global media, Ross Levinsohn, will be the firm’s new interim CEO and hopes to hold the post on a permanent basis. He just recently ran the firm’s Americas unit which includes advertising sales

To bolster their claims, Yahoo even quoted Facebook CEO and one of Forbes Magazine’s newly minted billionaire Mark Zuckerberg as saying that Facebook is indeed based on Yahoo’s social networking tech. The young CEO then proceeded to imply the lack of innovation of Yahoo over the year when he said “getting there first is not what it is all about”.

In the wake of other similar issues of wrangling over intellectual property like that of Apple, Microsoft and Google, this move by Yahoo seems to be puzzling even the observers. It has come at a time when Facebook is set to launch an IPO that according to Zuckerberg will increase its value to $100 billion. Speculations abound as to the motive of Yahoo when it apparently doesn’t have to go against the surging popularity of the fast growing social media networking leader.

It is interesting to note that these two companies are going in opposite directions in the financial ladder. This might not be a good move by Yahoo according to experts since this is a risk that might just push it further down; it should have focused instead on innovative solutions.

One thing’s for sure: if you ask the millions of Facebook users out there, this might garner a million “unlikes” and be labeled a major fail. See the official complaint below.
Complaint for Patent Infringement

Yang’s resignation, however, was greeted with some positive responses. For example, Yahoo’s share gained 3.4 percent after the announcement. Likewise, analysts call this development positive for the ailing Yahoo company, which consider Yang as a “roadblock” towards a Yahoo recovery.

Yang’s bitter relationship with Yahoo shareholders is an open book. The relationship turned sour on 2008 when Yahoo, while Yang was the CEO, refused an offer from Microsoft to buy the company. Some believed this to be a bad decision especially the huge cash that Yang turned down along with the offer. Yang’s leadership is seen ineffective considering that Yahoo lagged behind other search engines, such as Google and Microsoft. Moreover, analysts find that Yahoo’s growth is slow compared with its competitors. Recently, Yang indorses what Yahoo called its “strategic review”, earning the ire of shareholders. This review is said to make Yahoo go private, or to sell or break the company.

The internet will surely remember Yang by reason of Yahoo. However, the internet is not the same as when he founded Yahoo 17 years ago. He may not be the right person for Yahoo and the internet. In fact, the internet may even be better without him for now. As the saying goes, good riddance.

Scott Thompson is taking the position of Yahoo’s CEO as a challenge and huge opportunity for him to share his knowledge. His initial plans for the company involve focusing on growing shareholder value, top-line growth, unique visitors and ad dollars. His experiences at PayPal as President taught him that building great Internet products is one of the key factors to growth and enhancement of consumer engagement so we can expect a brighter future for Yahoo in the years to come under Thompson.

If there is one thing that Scott Thompson would like to enhance first, it is definitely Yahoo’s data assets. He wanted to know how much data that Yahoo has and how he could explore this data to come up with the company’s next generation products in the future. However, Thompson’s arrival to Yahoo will not change Yahoo’s plans of monetizing its Asian assets including Alibaba. In addition to this, Thompson also announced that mobile will play an important role in Yahoo’s success. In fact, Yahoo started as a mobile pioneer, but due to the tough competition in the industry, Yahoo has been left behind.

Scott Thompson is actually starting his position as CEO in Yahoo during its tough times. As we all know there were several reports that some private firms were expressing their interest in buying a 20% minority share and Yahoo has also been reported to be selling its holdings to China and Japan as well. It seems that Scott Thompson will be facing a lot of challenges as Yahoo’s CEO and it would be interesting to see how he will get through all these issues.

Currently, Nine countries (aside from US) support the Hub’s messaging functionalities. The free and easy-to-use mobile messaging app allows switching of text conversation from private to a group chat. The Hub also allows sending of message without incurring fees, and uses either the phone’s WiFi functionality or the user’s data connection plan.

Users can send messages to anyone as long as they’ve the recipient’s mobile number. To enjoy the app’s full feature, recipients are encouraged to download and install the app on their android handsets. The latest Yahoo messaging app complements its existing Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo!Messenger app on mobile.

Other features of the Hub app include Instant Notifications, Privacy which allows the viewing and adding of participants in a conversation thread, management of account list, act as an account authenticator, access course location, read and write contact data, and read phone state and identity. The app’s system tools can prevent the device from sleeping, allows the modification of system’s setting data, and modify sync settings. You can download the app now through Android Market.

The failed first attempt caused the downward trend of Yahoo’s stock and the removal of Jerry Yang as CEO. To recall, Yahoo’s board postponed the nomination process to find alternatives to the takeover which could have resulted to Microsoft gaining control of the company. The deal eventually failed after Microsoft’s rescission and the company struggled with the effects afterwards, but both agreed to a partnership in search engine functionality.

A new deal would entitle Microsoft to a major discount considering that Yahoo’s shares stumbled from $29 in 2008 to $15 when another CEO was fired. Other companies interested are the Alibaba Group of China (40% owned by Yahoo), DST of Russia and News Corp., former owner of MySpace. Although denials abound, Yahoo is reportedly positioning its financial status to court interested buyers.

Microsoft’s online venture has lost a staggering $8.5 billion in less than a decade and it needs a new partner in the latest attempt as U.S. laws may hamper the entry of Alibaba and DST to US online business.

Carol Bartz has become a part of Yahoo back in January 2009 and has made significant contributions to Yahoo since then. In fact, she turned the company around after it balked from Microsoft’s $ 44.6 billion takeover offer and has also implemented some aggressive job cuts and established a solid partnership with Microsoft that resulted to the Yahoo results being powered by Bing. However, that deal is also the same deal being blamed for the company’s weakening financial performance as evident by a 5% decrease in its overall revenue year after year.

What is really surprising about Yahoo CEO’s Carol Bartz firing incident is that lots of investors welcomed this news with enthusiasm as evident by the results of the stock trading where Yahoo stocks resulted in a 6 percent increase to its $ 13.72 per share. The sudden increase of Yahoo stocks is nearly equal to the gain that the company has eked out since Bartz take over the position as CEO in 2009.

Additionally, Yahoo has also formed the Executive Leadership Council that will be responsible in supporting newly appointed CEO Tim Morse in managing the company’s day-to-day operations until the time that a permanent CEO has been appointed. This newly formed executive council consists of Yahoo’s key personnel like Blake Irving (EVP & CPO), Mike Callahan (EVP, general counsel and secretary), Rich Riley (SVP of the EMEA), Rose Tsou (SVP of the APAC region), and Ross Levinsohn (EVP, Americas). The co-founders of Yahoo namely David Filo and Jerry Yang will not be a part of the said council, but they will remain as Chief Yahoo officials.

As of present, the company is on thorough search on the next company CEO. So watch out for more details.

Paul Allen stressed out that he owns the technology being used by these top companies and therefore he has every right to demand payment from these websites for using such technologies. Mr. Allen filed the motion before a federal court in Seattle and accused internet giants such as Google, Facebook and eBay and eight other companies as well, using a technology that was developed a decade ago by Mr. Allen himself.

The suit mentioned four patents which were developed by Internal Research Corporation, a laboratory and technology incubator which Mr. Allen himself has financed with about $100M, but eventually the said laboratory has closed down about a decade ago. These four patents mostly covered significant parts of how these companies do business.

The suit filed by Mr. Allen doesn’t provide details on how much damages he is claiming against the companies involved. However, Mr. Allen’s spokesman David Postman made a clarification that the filing has nothing to do about Mr. Allen’s health or financial condition. In fact, Mr. Allen is one of the richest people in the world and just recently he has pledged half of his wealth to charity. In addition to that, even if Mr. Allen was diagnosed last year with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma he has managed to complete the treatment necessary for the said disease and has no outstanding issues related to it.

A representative from Google who commented on this issue strongly believes that the lawsuit filed against Google and other companies as well is a desperate act of some people who chose to compete in the courtroom instead of the marketplace. Other websites such as eBay and Facebook are still reviewing the complaints filed against them and are planning to fight it vigorously. Representatives from the other websites refused to give any comment regarding the issue.

How will this case end? Will Paul Allen win this lawsuit against these companies? Is there really a patent violation? And how will these companies defend themselves? These questions are yet to be answered.

Bartz, known for her no-nonsense demeanor and spicy vocabulary, spoke with more vehemence than usual, labeling her company’s 6 percent operating margin as “pathetic” and acknowledging Yahoo “somehow got boring” and confused users, clients and analysts about its mission

If you remember, this same tech company appointed Carol Bartz as its new CEO replacing Jerry Yang – its co-founder following the financial turmoil Yahoo went through after rejecting Microsoft’s offer to buy it. Now, Ms. Bartz, like an Amazon Hitler ordering everyone around vowed to regain Yahoo’s glorious days.

Today is the beginning of a journey back to respect…  We’re not here to ‘wow’ you today, but we’re here to intrigue you and impress you and we’re going to work really hard to do that.

We featured an article criticizing about Yahoo and Microsoft’s activities at the same time Google released Google wave. In that article, we mentioned that Ms. Yahoo CEO vehemently denied that “Yahoo! was Never a Search company”. Well, she said that again plus added other preposterous remarks.

We’re not a search company. We’re not a display [advertising] company. We’re a broad-based Internet technology company that serves up the most interesting content on the Internet to 600 million people. That’s awesome

Bartz firmly believed that Yahoo! is a communication engine, relaying information across its 600  million users. True, but you and I both remember that hearing the word Yahoo! 10 years ago was synonymous to yellow pages, search engines and directory. Not an advertising company? I dunno if this CEO were talking with Americans or Nigerian youngsters. Heck, the majority of websites’ “blood” come from advertisements. What was she talking about?  Have you checked your emails and Yahoo messengers lately? You probably have seen these.

Yahoo made some drastic changes to their home page and Yahoo mail logos. Now, instead of using the word “Yahoo!”, they replaced it with just a letter “Y” signifying You. Nothing against that, we only observed some weird looking photos that goes along the new brand. You must have noticed them too.

What’s wrong with those pictures above? Hmm.. the black teen on the 1st quadrant looks like a cold-hearted dude who just got into an argument. Next, we love dogs, but the picture of the dog at the second quadrant looks “uninviting”. Lastly, the girl on the 3rd quadrant who supposedly should be having fun looked like she just twisted her neck involuntarily.

Whatever your perceptions are, how come these photos passed the eyes of Yahoo’s sales and ads team? Or perhaps, they don’t have a sales and ads team because Y! isn’t an Advertising Company in the first place!

Other investors are losing confidence on Ms. Bartz and her ability to turn Yahoo’s current financial mess 180 degrees. It was reported that Ms Bartz was allegedly “cashing out” Yahoo shares for an “automatic compensation program”. See video for the report.

What can we say with Ms. Bartz’s (a.k.a Hitler CEO) remark on regaining R-E-S-P-E-C-T?  They should probably cut-off their CEO A.S.A.P before proceeding on new marketing and financial plans. Any company can’t be successful while riding a L-O-S–E-R.

The news firm had seen 2 list containing 30,000 names and passwords from email accounts posted online. Big G claimed that the illegal postage of webmail accounts was caused by “industry-wide phishing scheme”.

We recently became aware of an industry-wide phishing scheme through which hackers gained user credentials for web-based mail accounts including Gmail accounts

Phishing sites are fake and illegal websites set up to lure innocent web users. When users enter these malicious sites, confidential information such as email username, passwords, bank accounts, credit cards and other important info could be stolen.

Phishing scams can be seen on your email disguised as a normal message from your local bank. The user will be lured on a fake Phisher’s website where he/she will be asked to type bank details such as username, account number and passwords. (source: wikipedia)

Google further added that the illegal postage was not a “breach of security” but rather “a scam to get users to give away their personal information to hackers”. The search giant already implemented security and preventive measures on the affected accounts.

As soon as we learned of the attack, we forced password resets on the affected accounts. We will continue to force password resets on additional accounts when we become aware of them.

Web security analysts said that this is a “wake-up call” for big webmail providers to educate their users about widening influence of phishing scams.

Currently, affected accounts can still be accessed by its users. But of course, The harm was already done. Most probably, malicious hackers have already took advantage of these posted accounts. Amidst of these web mail exploitations, users (affected and unaffected) were informed to always change their email passwords and take precautionary measures to prevent similar email scams from happening in the future.

(source: BBC, Mashable)