Yahoo! has a reshuffle at the top

Yahoo!, under intense pressure, reorganised its upper management yesterday in a plan designed to improve its products, underlying technology and operational execution, the company said.

The new structure leaves chief executive Jerry Yang and president Susan Decker at the top of the org chart. As expected, Ash Patel and Hilary Schneider will report to Decker, with Patel leading a new audience products division, and Schneider in charge of go-to-market operations for the US region.

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In addition, a third, as-yet-undetermined executive will report to Decker. That executive will run an "insights strategy team", with responsibilities for centralising and running a Yahoo!-wide strategy regarding use of data and analysis. The new executive will be named in coming weeks, Yahoo! said Thursday.

The company is also forming some new groups within its technology organisation. One, the audience technology group, will be led by Venkat Panchapakesan. Another group, whose leader is yet to be announced, will focus on cloud computing and data infrastructure.

Yahoo! underwent an executive exodus in the last two weeks, losing three executive vice presidents, two senior vice presidents, and others. It's not clear to what extent those departures were the cause or the result of the reorganisation plan but Decker indicated in a statement that the reorganisation has been under way for months.

Decker said in a statement: "The changes we're making today will help deliver superior global products for users and enable faster and better decision-making. This is a logical next step in light of our success last year in moving to a more centralised approach to developing world-class marketing products."

Decker said: "We have planned these changes deliberately over the past several months to clarify responsibilities and to capitalise on the scale advantages while allowing for fine-tuning to meet local market needs."

Original article: Yahoo reorg centralizes power from CNET News.com