Yahoo! announces global restructure

Yahoo! has unveiled a global reorganisation, following Microsoft’s failed bid and a number of high-profile departures from the internet company. Changes include centralising consumer product development, creating an insights strategy team and forming a US region.

The three divisions will report to president Susan Decker. Yahoo! says the restructure aims to deliver improved products and technology and streamline its decision making process.

The audience product division will be responsible for product strategy and management on a company wide basis. It will be led by Ash Patel, who was previously in charge of the company’s platforms and infrastructure group.

The insights strategy team will assume responsibility for centralising and executing strategy for the use of data and analysis across the company. A division head will be named “in the next few weeks”. A US region team will be led by Hilary Schneider, previously head of Yahoo!’s global partner solutions group.

The changes come as Yahoo! faces criticism over its search advertising deal with Google in the US and Canada and as the internet company writes to its shareholders, defending its decision to block Microsoft’s $47.5bn offer.

Yahoo! has also been hit by a series of defections in recent months. Among those to leave the company include Jeff Weiner, head of its network division, Vish Makhijani, general manager of its search business, and Qi Lu, leading engineer for its Panama search marketing platform.

Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, founders of the photo-sharing service Flickr, and Joshua Schachter, founder of social bookmarking tool, Delicious, have also left.