We'll see if Thompson's pop-up version can get Yahoo back on track.

April 11, Dan Faber, a senior journalist at the US technology web site CNET, said the restructuring plan unveiled by Yahoo's new CEO, Scott Thompson, in Tuesday did not offer a new direction, and the restructured corporate structure is similar to the past, Meanwhile, Yahoo still faces the problem of brain drain and innovation backwardness. As a result, Thompson's restructuring plan is just "old fashioned" compared with the previous CEOs.

In an e-mail sent to staff, Thompson said the company will be restructured from May 1 to three core business units, the consumer sector led by Ross Levinson (Ross Levinsohn), and the newly established regional department responsible for handling and advertising business, and the technical department responsible for Yahoo's infrastructure and platform.

Lack of a new direction

After replacing board members, suing Facebook for infringing patents (Facebook also launched a lawsuit against Yahoo), announcing layoffs of 2000 people (equivalent to 14% of Yahoo's global workforce and sixth layoffs in four years), Yahoo's new CEO, Dartmouth Thompson finally unveiled his own plan to reshape Yahoo's brand and boost performance.

Like Yahoo's former CEO Bartz Carol Bartz and Jerry Yang, Thompson wrote in a memo to employees: "For Yahoo to win in the core business, we all have to put users first." Specifically, we have to focus on the people who trust us to provide them with personalized content and communications, in the hope that they can communicate with the user advertisers. It needs to be very clear that our top priority is to win the core business, which will give us the right to seek the latest growth opportunities. ”

Every CEO wants to make users and advertisers happy, so there is no clear new direction.

Ms Bartz, who took over Yahoo in 2009, has said her goal is to "simplify", with the idea of "consistently providing users and advertisers with an excellent experience in every part of our business." It is the responsibility of everyone in Yahoo to provide a good user experience, for which each part of our entire company will have a clear responsibility in our daily work. ”

At the beginning of 2008, Yahoo co-founder, CEO Jerry Yang, attended the International Consumer Electronics Show and revealed his plan to make Yahoo an indispensable starting point for users ' internet experience. "We want Yahoo to be the starting point for users ' lives and to use powerful technology to simplify your life with the complexity of the internet," he said. ”

These rhetoric sounds hollow, we can look at the specific data.

Yahoo has not been able to return to growth for the past four years, while Google, Facebook and other internet companies have overtaken Yahoo in innovation and revenue growth. Despite the downward trend, Yahoo still has 700 million users a month and has several leading web sites.

2011, Yahoo revenue of 5 billion U.S. dollars, net profit of 1 billion U.S. dollars. However, in 2011, the number of employees less than Yahoo One-fourth's Facebook received 3.7 billion U.S. dollars in revenue, the net profit is also 1 billion U.S. dollars. Yahoo's market capitalisation is about $18 billion trillion, and Facebook's market capitalisation is expected to exceed $100 billion trillion.

Similar company structure

Like Yahoo's former CEO, Thompson reorganized the company's structure to get more revenue from more creative and attractive products, with a large user base and advertisers. According to his memorandum of reorganization, Mr Thompson is not much different from his predecessor's restructuring plan. As in the past, Yahoo is still the sales, technology and product sector.

Bartz worked as CEO for several years at the computer assistant software design company Autodesk. As CEO of Yahoo, she integrates technology and product departments, hoping to "launch a globalized product with extraordinary user and advertiser experience".

Prior to joining Yahoo, Thompson served as PayPal president for ebay's Electronic payments division, and also served as CIO in a number of large companies. He split the technology department into an independent department in the restructuring process, but also said in a reorganization memo that he would "arrange top design and engineering talent in the consumer business unit to ensure that we move faster and that every product we launch will meet the needs of our users".

Mr Thompson says Shash Cesse (Shashi Seth) will be responsible for a "connectivity unit", including search, communications and social products, such as Flickr and Yahoo Mail. He wrote: "The most important task for Seth and his team is not just to focus on how users search, communicate and share online today, but also to see further." The connectivity team will be responsible for redesigning how we design and deliver the next generation of Yahoo's basic experience. "In other words, Yahoo wants to catch up with rivals like Google, Facebook and Twitter."

Brain drain and innovation lag behind

Surpassing rivals requires a long-term vision and superior leadership, just as Steve Jobs did during the past more than 10 years to revive Apple. But the same need for good talent and a culture of rapid innovation, which is now Yahoo does not show. In the past few years, Yahoo has been experiencing the loss of talent, reversing this trend is not easy, because Silicon Valley and other areas of good engineers, designers, marketing and sales experts are very fierce competition.

Thompson will have a year to prove he can have a positive impact on Yahoo's business, and in the process he will face some serious challenges.

As CEO of Yahoo, Thompson said he wanted to lead Yahoo's business "back to the idea of innovation and change." "Innovation" and "change" just say that the real meaning is to stand out in the competition. More bluntly, Thompson needs to address the legacy of Mr Baxter: How to get more revenue from every Yahoo user.

Mr Thompson will also want to further define Yahoo's focus, which could make Yahoo a smaller company. Competition in the search field is not a clear strategy, Yahoo has invested a lot of resources in search, but search revenue has been declining. The social networking train has already started, and Yahoo has fallen behind. The sale of Yahoo's 40% per cent Alibaba stake and 35% per cent of Yahoo Japanese shares could be used to acquire large amounts of cash.

Thompson is no stranger to managing large businesses, but he is a layman in managing an advertising media and content business. In his view, at least, Yahoo is a media company, not a technology company. "Our success depends on the extent to which we can provide an interesting and rewarding experience for our customers to feel that our services are designed specifically for them," Thompson wrote in the memo. ”

That's the tune every Yahoo CEO has ever played. Over the next few months, we'll see if the Thompson pop-up version will get Yahoo back on track.