{"id":396233,"date":"2010-03-08T10:31:08","date_gmt":"2010-03-08T15:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"tag:contentnext.com,2010-03-06:article\/419-yahoo-disbands-mobile-group-as-part-of-reorganization"},"modified":"2010-03-08T10:31:08","modified_gmt":"2010-03-08T15:31:08","slug":"yahoo-disbands-mobile-group-as-part-of-reorganization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/396233","title":{"rendered":"Yahoo Disbands Mobile Group As Part Of Reorganization"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Yahoo\"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO<\/a>) may have lost its exclusive search deal with T-Mobile USA<\/a>, but it is banking on a major reorganization to help recharge the company’s mobile efforts.<\/p>\n

The changes, which involves breaking up the mobile group and redeploying those employees across the company’s individual product groups, is the result of a review by CEO Carol Bartz, who has been an advocate of having fewer silos in the company. The reorganization has led to the departures of a number of senior mobile executives, most recently Yahoo’s Mobile General Manager Mitch Lazar, who announced his resignation this week<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Departures aside, integrating mobile into the company’s various properties makes a certain amount of sense, as mobile becomes a larger opportunity than the PC. In fact, rival Google (NSDQ: GOOG<\/a>) has been making strategic shifts of its own to emphasize mobile in relation to the PC.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Yahoo’s move underscores just how important mobile has become to large content and internet service providers. The company has one of the largest mobile audiences in the U.S.—more than 37 million unique users a month, according to comScore\/m:metrics, which is second to Google. It’s no longer an experiment. General mangers for Yahoo’s top properties will be held accountable for not just web traffic, but also the growth in mobile. <\/p>\n

In addition to Lazar, other departures from Yahoo’s mobile division in the past few months include: Marco Boerries, Yahoo\u2019s EVP of the Connected Life Division; Marc Davis, Chief Scientist; and Steve Boom, SVP of Connected Life. The reason for Lazar’s departure, and perhaps others, is now pretty clear: Most of his direct reports had been reassigned to other divisions, leaving him without many people to manage. Engineers and product managers that once worked within the mobile group have been reappointed to various teams, such as the home page, Mail, Messenger, News, Sports and Finance. <\/p>\n

The biggest signal that this transformation was taking place may have been when Yahoo Mobile’s Chief David Ko was promoted<\/a> to Audience head in late November. In addition to monitoring the company’s mobile efforts, he is now in charge of all of Yahoo\u2019s content sites in North America, including News, Sports and Finance.<\/p>\n

Cory Pforzheimer, Yahoo’s senior manager of corporate communications, who confirmed the group’s reorganization today, said: “We are infusing mobile throughout the organization, rather than having a specific team for mobile…The importance of mobile in Yahoo has increased and we are re-aligning the organization to do just that.” He said Yahoo will continue to have small regional teams that will manage the company’s more than 80 carrier partnerships worldwide. But now “mobile is top of mind for everyone, and it\u2019s part of regional teams, business teams, product teams,” he added. <\/p>\n

Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt said last month<\/a> at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that there’s a fundamental shift in how we access information, as phones and wireless networks become faster. In fact, Schmidt says Google has instituted a new rule, called “Mobile First,” where engineers are encouraged to come up with ideas and projects for the mobile phone before the PC.\n<\/p>\n

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