Yahoo! Loses Jeremy Zawodny!

You win some, you lose some! I guess this is exactly what is happening with Yahoo! After winning a long anticipated deal with Google, Yahoo Inc is now in the inevitable loop of losing three more of its prized possessions. If you remember, I had mentioned in February this year, about the departure of one of Yahoo's Top Guns, Bradley Horowitz (Head of Yahoo's Advanced Technology Division), who accepted an offer from Google. Well! History seems to be repeating itself and now not one, not two, but three high level employees are on their way to the exit door of Yahoo! Inc. According to NYT, two senior Yahoo! Executives Jeff Weiner (Executive VP, Network Division) and Usama Fayyad (Chief Data Officer) are leaving Yahoo! Also, one of the very well-known faces and a veteran at Yahoo!, Jeremy Zawodny is also severing his ties with Yahoo! On his personal blog, Zawodny has confessed his intentions of leaving Yahoo! and said, “In the next few weeks, I'll walk the halls at Yahoo! as an employee one last time and turn in my purple badge. After 8.5 years of service and a better experience than I could have possibly imaged back in 1999, the time for me to move on has arrived.”

Jeff Weiner (Executive VP, Network Division): Jeff Weiner was hired by Yahoo! in 2002, by the former CEO Terry Semel. At that time, Mr. Weiner was in-charge of the Yahoo! portal and its multiple services, including search, mail, My Yahoo, Groups, Flickr, Answers and media properties like news, finance, sports and entertainment. He is considered to be an integral component in the success and growth of the Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! News. As for his future plans, Mr. Weiner has already accepted appointments at two venture capital firms, Accel Partners and Greylock Ventures, as an entrepreneur in residence.

Usama Fayyad (Chief Data Officer): Usama Fayyad was serving as the Chief Data Officer and executive vice president of research and strategic data solutions at Yahoo! Before his decision to leave Yahoo! he had one of the most cumbersome jobs of sift through mountains of data to improve targeting of advertisements and content to Yahoo! users.

Jeremy Zawodny: A legend and a veteran at Yahoo!, he was hired in 1999 and played a key role in the launch and growth of the Yahoo’s developer network. He was also a staunch supporter of open source software inside the company. However, Mr, Zawodny has cited professional growth as reasons for his departure and he has stressed that in no ways is it connected to Yahoo's depreciating financial figures.

In a statement that can be described as a 'farewell speech', Mr. Zawodny said, “It's been quite a ride, and I'm really going to miss Yahoo. I'll miss the parking debates and all the "random" stuff we're so fond of ranting about. Watching from the outside is going to be a very different experience. But the opportunity to work in a much smaller company recently presented itself and it was simply too interesting to pass up. I'll say more about that in the coming weeks”.

As long as we are on the topic of outgoing executives, there is Ask.com, that has also lost one of its high-level executives. According to Search Engine Land, Peter Linsley, former Senior Product Manager for Search at Ask.com, has quit Ask.com to join Google. Mr. Linsley is considered to be the encyclopedia about the workings of Ask.com. From algorithm, search results, user interface to a lot of other things. Mr. Linsley is now working with Google as a product manager and is working on the image search team.

Both Yahoo! And Ask have suffered a serious blow and a loss that would be quite hard to compensate.

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