As we announced in October, we’ve been aggressively managing our costs to bring them in line with the challenging economic conditions. Unfortunately, that means laying off employees –- by far the toughest part of being a manager. Here’s the email I sent to Yahoos today:

yahoos,



today, most of our layoffs in the US are happening, and they’ve been underway in other regions around the world. 



this is a tough time for all of us and i wanted to take a moment to reach out to you.
 


saying goodbye to colleagues and friends is never easy. they all are dedicated members of our yahoo! family, who worked beside us and shared our passion. 



but as you all know, we must take actions to better perform in today’s turbulent global economy. while we’ve found efficiencies in many parts of our business, laying off employees is unfortunately unavoidable. our difficult decision to let colleagues go reflects the changes we’re having to make to better align costs with revenues – something businesses in virtually every sector are also having to do. 
 


for those who are affected by these layoffs, i am extremely grateful for your contributions to yahoo!. we realize the impact this will have on you. that’s why, consistent with our past practices, we’re making every effort to support you with severance packages and other services. 
 


the reductions we’re making are very hard, but they are also very necessary — as we focus on the long-term health of our business. to those who are leaving us, i extend my heartfelt thanks on behalf of yahoos everywhere — you will be missed.



thanks,
 

jerry

Jerry Yang
Chief Yahoo and CEO

As you’ve no doubt already read, I’ve decided that I will step down from my role as Chief Executive Officer after my successor has been selected.

Ever since founding Yahoo! with David Filo 13 years ago, I’ve been passionate about this company, its brand, its employees, and the millions of people around the world who consider it their online home. That’s why I accepted the Board’s request to become CEO in June 2007, taking on the challenge of transforming Yahoo! at a time when the industry was evolving quickly and we needed to rethink and restructure our business.

And despite the tough external environment that we face, I truly believe we’ve made tangible progress in bringing our strategic vision to life. Most significantly, we’ve rewired our entire network to create a Yahoo! that has opened its doors to outside publishers and developers. We’ve launched an advertising platform that we think will transform how ads are bought and sold online. And we’ve continued to grow our audience –- standing first or second in more than 20 product categories and demonstrating that Yahoo! is the place users turn for major events like the Olympics and the Elections.

And now I believe the time is right for us to bring in a new leader –- someone who will build on the important pillars we’ve put in place and who will take the reins on the critical decisions our company faces. As for me, I’ll be returning to my role as Chief Yahoo and board member once my successor is named. I’ll go back to focusing on our global strategy, product excellence, technology innovation, and working with the Board and our executive team to help Yahoo! realize its full potential.

It’s been an extraordinary year here at Yahoo! –- for all of us. I’m really proud of the determination and resilience of Yahoos around the world who are so committed to giving you the best Internet experience possible. It is for them, and for you, that I will always bleed purple.

Jerry Yang
Chief Yahoo and CEO

Two years ago, we joined a number of stakeholders with the goal of setting standards for doing business in markets that present human rights challenges. Yesterday, we unveiled the results of our collective effort — a human rights code of conduct known as the Global Network Initiative. We’re confident this initiative creates a platform for positive change.

These principles provide a valuable roadmap for companies like Yahoo! operating in markets where freedom of expression and privacy are unfairly restricted. The code also requires that participating companies make a number of commitments (with independent accountability), including among others:

• Conducting human rights impact assessments to identify circumstances where freedom of expression and privacy may be jeopardized an advanced.
• Training employees on procedures to protect freedom of expression and privacy when faced with unfair government demands and restrictions.
• Being transparent with users when required by governments to remove content or limit access to information and ideas as well as circumstances where disclosure of personal information may be required.
• Considering challenging governments in court or other forums when faced with restrictions that appear inconsistent with domestic and international laws and standards.
• Engaging in individual and collective policy advocacy for change in places where laws or practices don’t adequately protect citizens’ rights to freedom of expression and privacy.

Does this mean repressive regimes will stop censoring content or demanding information on their own citizens? No. But, we think this initiative will eventually make it more difficult for them to do so, with companies and human rights advocates united against unreasonable and unlawful demands.

Despite the two years of arduous work among companies, human rights groups, academics, investors, and policy advocates, launching the Global Network Initiative is in many ways just the start. We expect the initiative to evolve, and we hope these standards will take root and grow into global guidelines for even more companies worldwide. All the participants in the initiative are acutely aware of today’s online challenges and we believe we’ve created a framework for addressing the trends we see for tomorrow.

The Internet is transformative. We’ve seen it empower individuals, modernize economies, improve healthcare, strengthen education and raise awareness of local, national, and international events. Today, at the start of this next phase of our collective journey in the field of business and human rights, we strive to ensure technology remains a force for good for citizens around the world. You can read more about all of our human rights efforts here.

Jerry Yang
CEO and Chief Yahoo

Don Draper of “Mad Men” would’ve loved advertising in 2009. Sure, he’d have to head out to the sidewalk with his Lucky Strikes and he wouldn’t have gotten away with philandering quite so easily, but he would’ve loved the opportunities that the digital age offers. He was a guy who knew how to connect — whether it was with a prospective client, a new hire, or a bottle of Scotch. And what we have in store for advertisers and publishers ushers the notion of “connect” into a new era.

Don, aka Jon Hamm, joined me, President Sue Decker, and our US Region Head Hilary Schneider on stage at Advertising Week in NYC today to help unveil APT from Yahoo!, our new advertising platform (which was formerly known as AMP from Yahoo! or Project Apex). Jon helped us put our platform in context with the evolution of advertising over the last 40 years – from the time when the advertiser was the indisputable king, to today, when the consumer is clearly in charge.

I started dreaming about this day 18 months ago, when I laid out my vision for our board of directors on how Yahoo! could play a unique role in changing the face of online advertising. In fact, Sue and I called it Nirvana at the time – a platform that would be to 2009 what radio was to 1924, TV to 1947, color TV to 1965, and the Internet to 1993.

Sounds like hype, right? We don’t think so. As Sue posted in April, we listened to all of the pain points that our partners shared about the process of buying and selling ads. Would you believe it takes more than 30 manual operational steps to move from ad strategy concept to launching that ad? It involves faxes (!!) and sometimes weeks in proposal processing. Audiences are now distributed across a sea of web sites and are harder to find, understand, and put a value on. Madison Avenue might think it’s a shame Johnny Walker Red doesn’t flow at the office anymore.

APT looks to change all that. It’s simple. It’s open. It’s fast (like minutes vs. days). It provides a new level of control. It offers cross-selling more easily than ever been before. It will provide large amounts of quality inventory. It will help advertisers customize and target their messages more precisely through advanced targeting. And it will drive results. All this from a single online application. No more cobbled together processes or impressions. No more wasted time.

Our confidence in APT’s ability to transform the marketplace isn’t based on theory or conjecture. It’s because of the feedback we’ve been hearing from partners who have been working with us side-by-side as we developed and then began testing the platform. In fact, William Dean Singleton, CEO of Media News Group (parent company of the San Jose Mercury News), also joined us on stage today, using words like “extraordinary and “sea-change” to describe how APT will take MNG into the future.

APT is real today and we’re starting to roll it out to our Newspaper Consortium members, which will continue for the remainder of this year and into the next. They’ll be followed by other publishers, advertisers, agencies and ad networks beginning in 2009.

If only Sterling Cooper could be here to reap the benefits.

Jerry Yang
Chief Yahoo and CEO

Today, Yahoo! moves past a distracting proxy contest. This morning we announced a settlement with Carl Icahn which will enable Yahoo! to put an end to this challenging chapter in our history, and allow us to get back to the business at hand – building our business and maximizing value for all stockholders.

Over the past few weeks we’ve made progress communicating with investors, helping them to better understand our roadmap for long-term growth, our valuable combination of assets, and our solid position in the converging search and display marketplaces. These discussions have been productive for everyone.

Under the terms of the settlement with Mr. Icahn, he has withdrawn his nominees for consideration at the annual meeting, and has agreed to vote his Yahoo! shares in support of the Board’s nominees. At our annual stockholder meeting on Aug. 1, we’ll ask stockholders to re-elect eight of our current directors. (In connection with the settlement of the proxy contest, Bobby Kotick has notified the Company that he will not stand for re-election to the Board.) After the annual meeting, Mr. Icahn will be appointed to our Board. We’ve also agreed to expand our Board to make room for two additional members to be chosen by the Board upon the recommendation of the Board’s Nominating and Governance Committee from a list that includes the rest of Mr. Icahn’s slate and Jon Miller, former Chairman and CEO of AOL.

We’re pleased that both parties were able to work together productively to accomplish this settlement, and we look forward to working with the new Board members and benefiting from their fresh perspective.

Yahoo! is now moving forward with one team and one voice, and we’re excited about what the future holds.

Jerry Yang
CEO and Chief Yahoo

It’s no longer a rumor. We have inked a deal with Google in which AdSense ads can run alongside Yahoo! search results in the U.S. and Canada.

Our strategy to fully realize Yahoo!’s potential is based on the convergence of search and display — the next big opportunity in the rapidly growing online ad industry. This agreement helps us capitalize on that. We’re moving full speed ahead to execute with speed, commitment, and passion.

It’s also in keeping with our open strategy — WebMD sells their audiences on Yahoo!, Yelp can customize how their local search results appear using Search Monkey, advertisers and publishers will buy and sell in an open marketplace with our upcoming AMP! from Yahoo!, and we’re now opening our paid search results to Google.

I wanted to put this arrangement in perspective and comment on what it is and what it isn’t. First, it does not signal that Yahoo! plans to exit paid search. Quite the contrary. Through the financial benefits of better monetizing our search traffic, we’ll be investing in search services and ad platforms, including Panama. An independent search business is critical to our future. We will retain complete flexibility and will call the shots on where and how often Google ads will appear. While Google has better advertiser coverage in some query areas, we still have the ability to provide Panama ads where they are most valuable.

Second, this deal is good for competition. It may seem counterintuitive that doing a deal with a competitor would improve our competitive position. But as search and display continue their convergence, it puts Yahoo! in a better position to innovate and compete aggressively with Google and others for ad dollars. It also offers advertisers more choice and publishers gain better distribution and monetization to grow their business.

Finally, this agreement is non-exclusive. We remain completely free to display any paid search listings across our properties — whether from Yahoo!, Google, or any other third parties.

We’ve done something important today. We are directly addressing one key element in Yahoo!’s strategy to lead the way in search and display. I believe it puts us on a faster track to creating stockholder value and strengthening our advertising leadership.

It is, of course, just one step. We’ll continue to look at all of our alternatives to advance our strategies and enhance growth and profitability.

Jerry Yang
Chief Yahoo and CEO

The last 13 weeks have been a remarkable time here at Yahoo!. We’ve been living under the microscope in a way we never have before. There has been greater attention than ever on our strategy and our ability to execute against it. Some even questioned whether Microsoft’s unsolicited proposal would distract us from our mission, just as we were beginning to really push the pedal on our strategy.

Those people underestimated the determination of Yahoo!’s incredible people, spirit and culture.

Our first quarter was probably one of the most exciting quarters in our history in terms of delivering innovative products and services that really move the needle and make a difference for our users and customers: Acquiring Maven Networks. Launching Buzz, OneSearch 2.0, voice-activated mobile search, video on Flickr, Shine. Previewing AMP! from Yahoo! and SearchMonkey. Adding more Newspaper Consortium members. Establishing our New R&D labs in India and Israel. Our first quarter results proved that we have the right strategy, a fantastic team, and that our investments are starting to pay off.

All of this reinforced our board’s position that Microsoft’s offer undervalued our unique global franchise.

So, what’s next? With Microsoft’s withdrawal, we’ll be better able to focus our energy on growing our industry leadership and maximizing value for stockholders. We’ll continue to execute on our plan — making your Internet experience as personal, relevant, open and social as possible, serving advertisers so well they insist on working with us, and opening up Yahoo! in a way that developers dream of. And, we’ll also continue to pursue strategic opportunities that position us for long-term success.

Has this experience changed us? Of course, it has. We’ve emerged a stronger, more focused company with an even greater sense of purpose. I’m so proud of how this company has come together, put the noise aside, and showed the world that we have the resolve and determination to thrive in challenging times.

We know the spotlight will probably stay on us for a while. That’s fine — we have a clear path ahead and momentum to build on. And thousands of dedicated Yahoos around the world who have held up well to scrutiny. It’s now up to us to show what we Yahoos can really do.

By the way, I’m sure you’ve all read or watched the news about this. Frankly, there’s a lot of nonsense and misinformation in what’s being reported. Just so we are all clear, here’s what happened. The board took its mission very seriously. We clearly indicated to Microsoft that we were open to a transaction but only if it were on terms that fully recognized the value of Yahoo! and was in the best interests of our stockholders.

No one is celebrating about the outcome of these past three months… and no one should. We live and work in a competitive world and the Web is only going to get more competitive. Executing on our strategic plan is what matters most.

Finally, I’d like to thank the many of you who so passionately shared your support for Yahoo!. That’s what brings it all home for us.

Jerry Yang
CEO and Chief Yahoo

“Using technology to make the world a better place.” That was the theme of remarks I made yesterday at Georgetown University, where I had the chance to honor the research of Irene Wu, the inaugural Yahoo! International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet Fellow. Irene’s work is part of a partnership we created with Georgetown a year ago to study the link between international values and Internet and communications technologies.

Our goal is to inspire scholars to explore new ways to use technology for good, particularly in navigating the complexities that go hand-in-hand with the shrinking globe that the Internet has created. These are complexities we at Yahoo! are well familiar with. While we’ve been at the forefront of opening up new communications and information frontiers for citizens of the world, we’ve also seen the challenges that come when these technologies are used by governments for other purposes – those that run counter to our values.

Although our challenges have been widely reported, the full scope of efforts we’ve been making to address freedom of expression and other human rights issues may not be as well known. So I thought I’d take an opportunity to set out some examples:

• Industry Code of Conduct: We’ve been working with industry counterparts, academics, human rights organizations, and socially responsible investors to develop a code of conduct that would guide leading global technology and communications companies operating in challenging markets. We hope to announce the results of our collective efforts in the near future.
• Academic Fellowships: In addition to the Georgetown Fellowship program, we also initiated the Yahoo! International Journalism Fellowship at Stanford in conjunction with the John S. Knight Fellowships program. It focuses on journalists from press-restrictive countries, allowing them to withdraw from their environments for a year of study. The first fellow came from Pakistan and this year’s fellow is from Zimbabwe.
• Human Rights Fund: Recognizing the plight of unfairly imprisoned political dissidents, we established a Human Rights Fund last month to provide humanitarian and legal support for these individuals and their families. We’ve partnered with noted human rights activist Harry Wu, who spent 19 years in a Chinese labor camp, to administer the fund. It will also support educational efforts on human rights. We’re so grateful to have Harry’s partnership in this.
• Policy Dialogue: While we’re committed to advancing human rights globally, there are practical limits to corporate diplomacy. That’s why we’ve been urging government officials in the United States and abroad to advocate for policy change. We believe governments have the most leverage to influence the decision-making of other governments.
• Advocating for Freedom: Having followed these issues intently and having now met personally with the families of dissidents, I understand our responsibility in advocating for their release. In fact, just yesterday, I went to Capitol Hill with Harry Wu to meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Dianne Feinstein to discuss these issues. And I recently sent a letter to Condoleezza Rice before her visit to Beijing, urging support in seeking freedom for Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning. With the Summer Games approaching, there seems to be a perfect window of opportunity for exerting diplomatic leverage. Senior Yahoo! leaders have also met with high-level Chinese and U.S. officials to directly appeal for release. We’ll continue to pursue this doggedly.

We’ve learned important lessons from our experience in China. We hope our experiences and plans can help guide other companies and ultimately influence the emergence of more open societies around the globe — when technology can truly be used to make the world a better place.

Jerry Yang
CEO and Chief Yahoo

This morning, our General Counsel, Michael Callahan, and I testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C. I wanted to share with all of you some of the thoughts I conveyed to the Committee today. You can read my full testimony here and Mike’s here.

On a personal level, the very serious human issues at stake cause me great concern. I’ve invested my professional life in this company, and I believe in the Internet and its incredible power. I also know that governments around the world have imprisoned people for simply speaking their minds online. That runs counter to all my personal and professional beliefs.

Our company is centered on empowering our customers. We never lose sight of the fact that our success as a business is built upon the trust we maintain with our community of global users, including citizens around the world, our advertisers, publishers, and business partners.

Today, despite broad limitations on discussion of sensitive political subjects, Chinese citizens know more than ever before about local public health issues, environmental causes, politics, corruption, consumer choice, job opportunities, and even foreign affairs. Much of this change is due to the Internet.

These markets also present companies like ours with challenges in the areas of free expression and privacy. This morning, I described some of the steps we’ve taken to address these challenges. I’ve personally met with senior State Department officials, Members of Congress, and others to discuss the issues. For the past year and a half, we have been actively engaged in a formal human rights dialogue to design an industry code of conduct. We’re working closely with a number of the most prominent human rights groups.

We have been and will continue to be actively engaged for the long-term. As a company in its teenage years, with hundreds of millions of users, and with the human stakes more challenging than ever, we know we must work collectively to find approaches that maintain engagement in markets like China and also put companies in the position to act responsibly.

Jerry Yang
Chief Yahoo and CEO

There’s been much curiosity and speculation about what’s been happening here at Yahoo! over the past few months. Roughly 100 days into our business review, I’m ready to start sharing some of the framework for where we see the future of Yahoo!.

After I last posted in July, we gathered senior leaders from across the company to develop a vision that we believe is truly different from that of the past. We conducted an intense review of our business, examining everything from our strategy and culture to our competitive position and how the marketplace is evolving. We knew we had to change not only our business, but also how we prioritize and make decisions. We had to shift from a siloed mentality to a more collaborative organization that marches toward a common horizon. We had to determine which businesses to invest in, and which to begin to exit or de-emphasize.

What we ultimately saw was massive untapped potential and the opportunity to achieve things few companies on the planet could accomplish. As audacious as that sounds, we believe it’s entirely within our reach with a lot of hard work and discipline, greater focus, tough decisions, a shift in culture, and faster execution. And what will drive us? Creating incredible experiences for our customers.

Based on our analysis, we’ve made important decisions. We defined a strategy that revolves around making Yahoo! indispensable to an ecosystem of consumers, advertisers, publishers and developers while tapping into three key differentiators: generating and leveraging insights, deploying open platforms, and becoming partner of choice. While these have long distinguished us, we intend to do more with them going forward. We will do so by measuring how much more “relevant” we can become for each member of our ecosystem. We believe centering around “relevance” will become a unifying focus for us and drive increased value in everything we do.

We’re placing our bets in three big multi-year objectives. Let me walk you through them, what they mean, and what kind of actions support them:

1. Become the starting point for the most consumers: We’re defining “starting point” as being the sites that help you better manage your life and connect you to what matters most to you. Services like our Front Page, My Yahoo!, mail, search, and mobile all fulfill that role, while properties like news, sports, and finance (for example) serve as anchors from those starting points. We’ve made it our mission to provide kick-ass experiences in both of these categories to inspire the most consumers to begin their day with us. It’s critical for us to continue to invest and innovate in these offerings so that we can power and delight these consumers. Recent moves like the new Yahoo! Search, the new Yahoo! Mail, and our acquisitions of Zimbra and BuzzTracker should give you a sense of what we mean. And by tapping into our insights, we think we can significantly increase our relevance (why serve up World Series content to you on our front page when what you’re really interested in is Dancing with the Stars?).
2. Become the must-buy for advertisers: What’s key here is our transformation from selling inventory on primarily the Yahoo! network to becoming an advertising company that delivers comprehensive, integrated, and targeted solutions on Yahoo! and beyond. Through our acquisitions of RightMedia and BlueLithium, we think we’re on track to becoming the industry’s leading open ad network. We’ll provide advertisers with the benefits of more insights, open competition, and scaleable tools and platforms. We think our momentum is building. Panama’s global rollout is nearly complete, our display business is showing signs of growth, we’ve signed on more great publishing partners, and we’re encouraged by the traction we’re seeing in our new strategy.
3. Deliver open, industry-leading platforms that attract the most publishers and developers: We have phenomenal technology platforms and data infrastructure, and it’s time to share. Besides building on open API for critical platforms, we’re looking at many different ways to open Yahoo!. We’re excited about what could happen when a motivated community of publishers and developers starts plugging into our most popular services. Imagine how efficient your Yahoo! Finance experience could be with portfolios integrated from your brokerage. Or how personalized your Yahoo! homepage could be with a cool third-party widget. The possibilities are endless and “open” is all part of a new way of operating at Yahoo!.

Our new decision-making framework also informed what we’d no longer invest in. To start, we’ve de-emphasized our focus on subscription music in favor of ad-supported music, migrated Yahoo! Photos to Flickr, we intend to transition Yahoo! 360 to a more integrated Yahoo! “profile” experience, we’ve closed Yahoo! Podcasts and plan to shut down a number of one-off services, and we’re currently assessing our options for our Kelkoo comparison shopping service in Europe. We’ve identified still more areas and we’ll continue to work through them.

While our recent actions and initiatives provide the breadcrumb trail for Yahoo!’s future direction, you should now have a clearer sense of the new path we’ve charted. We’ve scripted our strategy, sharpened our organization, determined how we’ll prioritize, and zeroed in on our big bets. We’re in the midst of our transformation and seeing some initial progress. There’s hard work ahead, along with a large and growing market opportunity. If we execute as planned, I’m confident we’ll be creating substantial long-term value for our users, advertisers, publishers, and developers – and, of course, for our shareholders.

Jerry Yang
CEO and Chief Yahoo