So new Chief Executive Carol Bartz promised Tuesday as she announced first-quarter financial results and described the impression she's now begun trying to make on the Internet pioneer. Instead of an across-the-board cut, Yahoo's layoff of about 675 people is intended to enable new hiring and investments in the company's bigger Internet properties.
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz(Credit: Yahoo)
"We have good engineers but have to hire more and get them focused on the right stuff. It's probably the most important thing Yahoo's going to do to really become a big strong growing international company," Bartz said during a conference call to discuss the company's lackluster first-quarter results.
Specifically, she said the company will hire engineers to bring Yahoo's major properties onto a unified global platform rather than its current variety of different systems for different countries. Today's scattered technology infrastructure has prevented Yahoo from adapting quickly and adding new features, especially outside the United States, she said.
The choice shows Bartz isn't taking a quick-fix approach to Yahoo's problems. First comes engineering, then comes a better experience for Yahoo users, and only then comes the financial return. "All that investment will pay off, I believe, with more innovation, faster and better user engagement, and the stuff we need to be a hot site. If we're a hot site, the advertisers will follow," she said.
And Bartz cautioned that the revamp isn't going to be complete soon.
"To fully globalize all our platform is probably a couple-year program," Bartz said. "You can't underestimate the past focus the company had on the U.S. market...The international properties almost had to fend for themselves."
As an example, Bartz pointed to a revamped Yahoo Music site that opens up to content from YouTube, iTunes, Amazon, and other sites and lets Yahoo members share their music-related activity with their friends. That revamp wasn't possible internationally, she said.
Venting frustrationDuring the call, Bartz generally stuck to her script, reining her characteristically salty language. But some of her frustration with Yahoo's sluggish pace shone through at the end of the hour-long call.
Yahoo's engineering focus "was sort of scattered to the winds. There were engineers in almost every country, and way too many product people. We had one product management person for every three engineers," Bartz said. "We had a lot of people running around but nobody fucking doing anything!"
Projects like the Yahoo Open Strategy have been more than a year in the making and only are arriving gradually. Yahoo is a big property, and changes necessarily come slowly as the company tries to figure out what works and doesn't as it tows its massive user base toward new technology, but meanwhile, rival Google touts its experimental "launch early, launch often" philosophy.
Even as Google expands into telephone services, Web browsers, mobile phone operating systems, general-purpose cloud computing infrastructure, and any number of other projects, Bartz is keeping Yahoo focused on its core assets: a number of high-traffic Web properties.
Bartz specifically pointed to Yahoo's home page, sports, news, finances, mail, search, mobile, and entertainment sites as the companies focus, saying the company will deliver a "wow experience for our users."
Patience, patiencePatience could be hard to come by. Yahoo's first-quarter revenue, excluding commissions paid to partners, declined 14 percent from $1.352 billion to $1.156 billion.
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz(Credit: Yahoo)
"We have good engineers but have to hire more and get them focused on the right stuff. It's probably the most important thing Yahoo's going to do to really become a big strong growing international company," Bartz said during a conference call to discuss the company's lackluster first-quarter results.
Specifically, she said the company will hire engineers to bring Yahoo's major properties onto a unified global platform rather than its current variety of different systems for different countries. Today's scattered technology infrastructure has prevented Yahoo from adapting quickly and adding new features, especially outside the United States, she said.
The choice shows Bartz isn't taking a quick-fix approach to Yahoo's problems. First comes engineering, then comes a better experience for Yahoo users, and only then comes the financial return. "All that investment will pay off, I believe, with more innovation, faster and better user engagement, and the stuff we need to be a hot site. If we're a hot site, the advertisers will follow," she said.
And Bartz cautioned that the revamp isn't going to be complete soon.
"To fully globalize all our platform is probably a couple-year program," Bartz said. "You can't underestimate the past focus the company had on the U.S. market...The international properties almost had to fend for themselves."
As an example, Bartz pointed to a revamped Yahoo Music site that opens up to content from YouTube, iTunes, Amazon, and other sites and lets Yahoo members share their music-related activity with their friends. That revamp wasn't possible internationally, she said.
Venting frustrationDuring the call, Bartz generally stuck to her script, reining her characteristically salty language. But some of her frustration with Yahoo's sluggish pace shone through at the end of the hour-long call.
Yahoo's engineering focus "was sort of scattered to the winds. There were engineers in almost every country, and way too many product people. We had one product management person for every three engineers," Bartz said. "We had a lot of people running around but nobody fucking doing anything!"
Projects like the Yahoo Open Strategy have been more than a year in the making and only are arriving gradually. Yahoo is a big property, and changes necessarily come slowly as the company tries to figure out what works and doesn't as it tows its massive user base toward new technology, but meanwhile, rival Google touts its experimental "launch early, launch often" philosophy.
Even as Google expands into telephone services, Web browsers, mobile phone operating systems, general-purpose cloud computing infrastructure, and any number of other projects, Bartz is keeping Yahoo focused on its core assets: a number of high-traffic Web properties.
Bartz specifically pointed to Yahoo's home page, sports, news, finances, mail, search, mobile, and entertainment sites as the companies focus, saying the company will deliver a "wow experience for our users."
Patience, patiencePatience could be hard to come by. Yahoo's first-quarter revenue, excluding commissions paid to partners, declined 14 percent from $1.352 billion to $1.156 billion.
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