09|07|2011 12:27 pm EDT
Up For Sale?The big tech news yesterday was that Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo, was fired. Today the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Yahoo! is a possible takeover target (when weren’t they a takeover target). As Business Insider puts it,”That’s the equivalent of sticking a FOR SALE sign on the lawn.” Yahoo! may have missed their opportunity back in 2008 when Microsoft made the play to acquire them.
Obviously, Yahoo! has been one of the top upstream providers for domain parking and many large portfolios have relied on their feed over the years including Kevin Ham and Frank Schilling. Parking companies like Skenzo, Parked.com and TrafficZ also rely heavily on Yahoo!.
The continued uncertainty about the future of Yahoo! can not be good news for anyone in the space.
Yahoo! replaces CEO Semel and his co-founder, the more technical Jerry Yang, takes over. Semel will be a non-executive chairman from now on. Also Susan Decker, former head of the advertiser/publishing group within Yahoo! has been named president. This is the continuation of changes in management team within Yahoo! that has been rumored to be related to a possible sale or merger with another company, such as Microsoft. For the domain industry those are important changes to watch, especially for those relying on a Yahoo! PPC feed.