Yahoo! shakes up its execs

Yahoo!'s chief operating officer and the head of its entertainment group are leaving as part of a major reorganisation, the company has announced.

Chief operating officer Dan Rosensweig and Lloyd Braun, the head of Yahoo!'s media and entertainment group, are leaving, said a Yahoo! spokeswoman. John Marcom, senior vice president of International Operations, is also leaving the company "soon", she added. She declined to provide more details.

Meanwhile, chief financial officer Sue Decker will take over a reorganised advertising business unit but will continue to serve as CFO until a replacement is found, the company said.

The leadership assignments will take effect on 1 January, 2007, and the reorganisation is expected to be completed by the end of March. The spokeswoman said no layoffs were being announced at this time.

Yahoo!, which has suffered this year from search market share losses, the delay of its new ad platform and a drop in profits, is realigning its business groups under three new operating units. The executives heading up the units will report directly to CEO Terry Semel.

The new Audience Group will oversee search, media, communities and communications. An executive search has been launched for an executive to lead the group. The new Advertiser & Publisher Group will combine marketing, sales and distribution partners to create a global advertising network.

The new Technology Group, headed by chief technology officer Farzad Nazem, will tighten product engineering integration, help build new social media environments and speed up development of next-generation ad platforms, the company said in a statement.

Semel said in a statement: "The internet is continuing to grow and evolve at a rapid pace, and we're reshaping Yahoo! to be a leader in this transformation, just as we did successfully five years ago."

The new structure should quicken the pace of innovation at the company, which is in heated competition with Google and Microsoft for online ad dollars.

The changes are similar to general suggestions proposed by an executive in an internal memo which leaked out last month.

CNET News.com's Stefanie Olsen in San Francisco contributed to this report

Elinor Mills writes for CNET News.com