Last week, the fight between Apple and pugnacious hedge fund investor David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital went all flat when he withdrew a lawsuit after the company yanked a proxy proposal that would have allowed shareholders to vote on eliminating preferred stock from the company charter.

But the real issue at the core of the fight — the massive mountain of $137 billion in a cash hoard that Apple holds and that Einhorn wants it to distribute in some fashion to shareholders — still remains.

It’s not clear what Apple will do now, especially since a lot of it is overseas. But execs have indicated that they are evaluating what to do to best serve nervous investors, who have bidded the stock down 40 percent since the fall. While it’s not clear what that will be, it’s also pretty likely Apple will do something.

Until the company decides, though, I have some good ideas for CEO Tim Cook to consider:

* Apple could purchase 1,567,506 Tesla Model S Performance vehicles with 85 kWh battery and a carbon fiber spoiler at $87,400 each, which would effectively allow CEO Elon Musk to buy the New York Times (a bargain at $1.42 billion!) and use it as his own personal blog.

* It could buy 17.9 houses for each Yahoo employee located near its Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ, so they could be super-close to work, per CEO Marissa Mayer’s wishes. That breaks down to 206,015 overall homes for 11,500 workers, at a median sales price of $665,000 for the area.

* Apple could acquire a big chunk of the Internet all at once, including Groupon ($3.36 billion), Yahoo ($25.95 billion), Facebook ($61.7 billion), Twitter ($10 billion), LinkedIn ($18.32 billion), Yelp ($1.47 billion), AOL ($2.81 billion), Pandora ($2.09 billion), Zynga ($2.69 billion), OpenTable ($1.32 billion) and, finally, Pinterest ($2.5 billion). Phew.

* It could pay Andrew Mason’s $378.36 severance after getting jacked as CEO of Groupon 364,013,179 times over.

* Apple could pay for 97,857 parties for Yammer’s David Sacks’s 40th birthday (at $1.4 million each). Snoop Dogg included.

* It could foot the bill for the budget cuts to save the U.S. government $85 billion this year, so Americans could stop having to say “sequester.”

* Apple could buy $329 16 gigabyte Wi-Fi iPad minis for 416,413,374 people — everyone in the U.S. (315,429,318), plus France and Spain.

* Or it could just give the 7,069,909,686 people on the planet $19.38 each, and call it a day.

* Apple could use $1 bills to carpet an area of 560 square miles, which would more than cover Silicon Valley.

* Finally — and I think this would be a nice gesture to make up for calling his efforts a “silly sideshow” — Apple could give Einhorn 15.56 times the value of his $8.8 billion fund.

Or, of course, not.

I like a good dichotomy as much as the next person, which is why I decided to compare the shares of Yahoo with that of Apple over the recent time period.

That’s because in what amounts to a trading-places moment, despite their differences in focus, the pair have had almost polar opposite stock performances of late.

Yahoo, of course, is the famous Internet giant that has been trying to turn itself around for a very long time; Apple is the Silicon Valley phenom that has been wowing the sector for just as much time with endless innovative products.

Typically, that state of affairs has meant that Apple has enjoyed a rocket ship of a ride from Wall Street investors, while Yahoo has suffered. That’s certainly been true on a five-year basis, with Apple up 244 percent and Yahoo down 21 percent.

But in the last six months, it has been another story altogether. In that time, Apple has been sliding to its lowest price since September, down 35 percent. Meanwhile, Yahoo has surged nearly 50 percent in the time frame.

It’s the same story for the past three months, with Apple down 27 percent and Yahoo up 17 percent; and, the last month, with the Cupertino, Calif.-based device maker down 5 percent and the nearby Sunnyvale Internet portal up 11 percent.

It’s a classic story of hope, with investors counting on Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer to turn the tide at the long-suffering company, while they worry about Apple CEO Tim Cook’s ability to keep the hits coming fast and furious.

Perhaps most ironic? That part of Mayer’s appeal is her continued repetition of Yahoo’s mobile aspirations, although the results in that key arena are still negligible and decidedly nascent. Apple, despite the stock fall-off, still handily dominates mobile money-making and on a massive scale, although increasingly competitive Google Android devices continue to gain ground.

Last week, a fierce debate erupted over a range of social networks and in the media about a story we posted on Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s new decree that employees at the Silicon Valley Internet company would no longer be able to work from home.

In a sometimes awkwardly worded internal memo I posted from Yahoo HR head Jackie Reses, the company rolled out the new rule — pushed through by Mayer — which requires that Yahoo employees who work remotely relocate to company facilities by June 1.

“Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home,” read the memo to employees. “We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.”

The goal of Mayer to cure what ails Yahoo: Reviving a moribund and enervated workforce that has struggled to innovate and excel over many years. One of the many problems has been the liberal use of work-from-home policies that have been woefully mismanaged to create a culture that is simply not energized.

But, unless I am reading the memo wrong, the ban is not just limited to those who have arrangements to work from home full time — which number in the hundreds — but also employees who take one or two days a week at home.

Top sources told me that Mayer has been particularly irked about Yahoo parking lots that are slow to fill in the morning and quick to empty by 5 pm — which is atypical at other tech companies such as Google. (Mayer was a longtime exec at the search giant.)

At first, she tried to change culture in ways that rained down tasty perks on employees — such as free food and smartphones. Mayer has also been practical, instituting please-be-here Friday afternoon FYI weekly meetings and stricter performance reviews.

But she is now inevitably doling out more unpleasant medicine to the troops, starting with the banning of work from home, which has caused a big ruckus both internally and externally.

Some inside the company are clearly appalled, especially since it might more severely impact working mothers.

“When a working mother is standing behind this, you know we are a long way from a culture that will honor the thankless sacrifices that women too often make,” read one email I got from an internal source, referring to the recent birth of Mayer’s baby.

Many others at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ pointed to the nursery Mayer had built — for which she paid personally — next to her office as a perk others at Yahoo do not get.

“I wonder what would happen if my wife brought our kids and nanny to work and set em up in the cube next door?” joked a husband of another employee who will be losing her work-from-home privileges.

Yahoo employees, as far as I can see from its company careers page, offers the typical Dependent Day Care Flexible Spending Account, where staff can pay “dependent care expenses, such as day care or after-school care, with pre-tax dollars.”

While it is fair to raise the issue of how employees will cope given the sudden change in HR policy, others also think that limiting work at home is a good idea because it galvanizes culture and creates a spirit of collaboration that has been missing at Yahoo for far too long.

“Marissa is doing what good leaders do,” wrote one person on Twitter. “Making sure her Yahoo team is communicating & working TOGETHER.”

That is actually a sentiment expressed by Google CFO Patrick Pichette at a recent talk in Australia, when asked about telecommuting at Google:

“The surprising question we get is: ‘How many people telecommute at Google?’ And our answer is: ‘As few as possible’ … There is something magical about sharing meals. There is something magical about spending the time together, about noodling on ideas, about asking at the computer ‘What do you think of this?’ These are [the] magical moments that we think at Google are immensely important in the development of your company, of your own personal development and [of] building much stronger communities.”

That said, officially, many Googlers are allowed and even encouraged to work at home. The company told me when asked about work-from-home policies: “We do not have a formal policy and leave Googlers to use good judgment.”

It is the same for Facebook, which confirmed a “policy to provide flexibility as work permits.” In fact, one exec at the social network giant noted to me that its entire camera app was built from an engineer’s garage, with the group staying away from the office as long as they wanted to build it from home.

Business networking site LinkedIn also said it had “no formal policy at present,” but noted that many employees work from home full-time and part-time as the situation warrants and in consultation with managers.

It goes on and on like that throughout the tech scene, part of an ethos of letting tech talent make its own rules — from what they wear to when and where they work — that is deeply ingrained in the culture.

A Hewlett-Packard spokesperson said of the tech giant: “We do not ban [work from home] and many HP people do it … it is not at all an issue at HP and hasn’t been for years. Some folks have a regular schedule, while others can do it from time to time with the okay of their supervisors.”

An AOL spokesperson said the company doesn’t ban work from home.

A Netflix spokesperson referenced a well-known premium video company’s job deck, which stressed a “freedom and responsibility culture” and notes, “We don’t measure people by how many hours they work or how much they are in the office. We do care about accomplishing great work.”

Twitter had a different twist, but still supports working from home. Said a spokesperson: “We believe there are significant tangible and intangible benefits when employees are working under the same roof. We also recognize that every so often it’s important to be able to work remotely, and we allow for that flexibility.”

A Cisco spokesperson said the networking company also allows it, but it has to be approved by a direct manager: “It is certainly utilized by those employees who earn it. And, of course, with our collaborative suite of technologies like Webex (with video) and telepresence it is the next best thing to being there in person.”

A Microsoft spokesman said that the software company “offers flexible work schedules for all employees.”

Perhaps one of the best companies for a long time in the telecommuting space has been IBM. From its corporate Web page, also touting the environmental benefits:

“IBM was one of the first global companies to pioneer programs to reduce employee commuting. It has sustained these programs for nearly two decades. Two key aspects are its (a) work-at-home program and (b) mobile employees program. Today, more than 128,000 (29 percent) of employees globally participate in one of these programs. In 2011, in just the U.S. alone, IBM’s work-at-home program conserved approximately 6.4 million gallons of fuel and avoided more than 50,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions.”

Startups are much the same.

Said an Airbnb spokesperson of the online housing rentals site: “It’s a flexible policy and managers determine what’s appropriate on a case-by-case basis.”

At location startup Foursquare, a spokesperson said, “Our policy is to allow for ‘flexible work hours’ — and that applies to both the hours you work, and where you work from. While we don’t have any dedicated remote employees, our folks do work from home on occasion and we’re fine with that.”

Private social networking company Path is much the same, according to a spokesperson: “Path has a work-from-home policy. The manager and employee work out the details together.”

The only company I queried that did not respond immediately is Apple, which has been known for a long time to have much tighter rules with its employees. I will update when I hear from the company.

I also have emails in to Amazon, which is already known for flexible working policies.

But, overall, Mayer is forging new ground with her work-from-home ban. Whether that is enough to turbocharge the Yahoo culture is anybody’s guess.

Earlier today Yahoo reported fourth-quarter earnings that beat analyst estimates, on still-flattish revenue.

Still, up is up, even if it is not really that much up, so Wall Steet bid up shares of the Silicon Valley Internet giant in after-hours trading.

Now it’s onto the conference call with investors for CEO Marissa Mayer:

2:02 pm: Before the call, you can hear Mayer complaining about the goofy music played during the pre-conference call waiting time.

“We have to get better music,” she says to some minion. “This is not good music.”

Music to my ears! I say we get Beyoncé, lipsyncing or not.

The call starts quickly after that, with the ever-eager Mayer leaping right in with the fourth-quarter news, which is not all that bad.

It’s the first full year of growth in a while — though not the first quarter-to-quarter increase — even if it is only a very modest two percent increase.

That compares to industry-wide gains in revenue of many, many, many times that, but for Yahoo this is cause for a parade. A small parade, with good music, but a parade nonetheless.

“It’s hard to believe this is only my first full quarter here at Yahoo,” says Mayer in an upbeat tone.

She notes that her focus on product excellence and user experience was continuing, with some “early positive trends” in both products and people.

Mayer then list a series of moves, from the free food and better smartphones for employees to the addition of well-regarded entrepreneur Max Levchin to the board to the refreshes of Yahoo Mail and Flickr to the acquisition of some sassy new mobile startups.

Mayer also notes that the company under her purview had removed “385 of highest priority obstacles,” although she did not name any specifics.

I imagine what No. 332 is: Switching out the iceberg lettuce at the URL cafeteria on Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, Calif. HQ campus with some tasty organic mesclun as they have at Google, from whence Mayer came.

Better roughage means better returns!

2:14 pm: Mayer turns the call over to CFO Ken Goldman, also a newbie. As usual, he runs through the numbers that are already in all the releases already. But I am enjoying his New England accent, hoping he will say the slight increase in revenue was “wicked” good.

Goldman, in fact, calls the revenue increase “modest,” which is true, although it sounds like “mah-dist.”

What’s not mah-dist is how much stock Yahoo has bought back, using its windfall from the recent sale of assets in China. It’s $1.45 billion, with more that that left to use for more share buybacks. That should keep Yahoo’s stock up nicely.

Goldman also talks about increases in the company’s search business, although notes that the Microsoft relationship is still not the most fantastic.

He speaks more effusively of Yahoo’s Asian partners, including Yahoo! Japan and China’s Alibaba Group. It’s deserved, since they have been the company’s treasure trove against its meh core performance in recent years.

Not so tasty is the problem Yahoo has with a big-money contract dispute in Mexico, which Goldman reiterates is “without merit.”

2:28 pm: Goldman moves onto Yahoo’s cash position, which is strong and which he says is going to be used to make the company better.

Mayer is back on board, talking about key focuses over multiple years.

She says Yahoo needs a “chain reaction of growth,” which needs to be fueled by a dozen new products that become a daily habits for consumers to increase usage and other metrics.

A nuclear bomb explosion is not exactly the best metaphor for a company’s turnaround, but in Yahoo’s case it is probably a pretty good one, given how stubborn its decline has been.

Mayer then switches the metaphor to one she recently used about “returning to the roots” of Yahoo.

Actually, mixing the metaphors, Yahoo has to blast some significant roots that have gotten in the way of its innovation over the years.

“The best is yet to come,” promises Mayer, in what she says will be a multi-year effort.

Now onto questions from the analysts!

2:40 pm: The first question is about commercialization of its products. Mayer answers she is both pro-advertising and anti-ad — meaning they are good when they add to user experience and bad when they do not.

There will be slight margin declines due to this, which is the real point of the query, which Goldman says will not be too impacted.

The next question is on the weaker performance in display ads and whether mobile ads can ramp up quick enough or not.

Yahoo is not breaking out mobile revenue numbers as yet — it’s not impressive as yet, so that’s what’s going on there — although Mayer points to the number of mobile users increasing to 200 million now.

As to the declines in display, Mayer gives a non-answer, but it is likely due to big changes that new Yahoo COO Henrique De Castro has put into place in the way it sells ads and which AllThingsD.com previously reported on. Mayer earlier in the call had confirmed those changes.

The fact of the matter — which is just what the analyst was asking about — is that Mayer simply has to improve display revenue, which is Yahoo’s core business.

Mayer then addresses the issue of not providing usage metrics anymore. Yahoo has withheld a lot of them since she has taken over, and she says it is because they are not indicative of metrics that, well, she thinks you need to know.

Instead, Mayer points to other metrics that she feels are better, such as number of ads sold and price per click on search.

Speaking of search, the next question is about that. What can Mayer say — and she does — but that Yahoo must also improve in that area. Indeed, it is lucrative low-hanging fruit for the company.

Here comes an interesting observation she makes based on a question of mobile versus desktop, which Mayer says should not be separated as two areas as consumers don’t think that way.

Yahoo is tuning up a dozen products, she says, having started with Yahoo Mail and its Flickr photo-sharing app.

2:54 pm: Mayer is not saying which of this dirty dozen is next to get a makeover.

“We’re investing in small, nimble, excellent teams,” says Mayer, who then tries to reference a famous Margaret Mead quote, but ends up mangling it a bit.

It is, for the record: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

This is true, which might make some Yahoo staffers nervous, since Mayer’s recent stack ranking of them means she can start on employee layoffs anytime she likes to separate the wheat from the chaff.

3:01 pm: Whoo-whee, this is going long and I am getting weary. Mayer has to be some kind of digital Energizer Bunny — she just flew in from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and moved right into the prep for the Q4 earnings.

Tomorrow, she is presumably off to Las Vegas, where Yahoo’s global sales conference will start and she will doubtlessly be making an appearance.

I am exhausted simply by walking up and down the stairs at my house.

The next question is about third-party publishers and ad tech on mobile.

“Mobile monetization is new for everyone,” she says correctly, making the point that no one knows what is going to shake out.

She uses — as she has used — the example of when people thought search was not a moneymaker until Google proved otherwise.

The problem is, of course, that Google is Yahoo’s biggest rival in this new mobile ad arena, along with Facebook and many others. And Google, as its recent results showed, does know how to make money compared to Yahoo.

The next question is about mobile monetization eating into desktop revenue.

Mayer notes that Yahoo has hired 120 people with computer science degrees in the quarter to work on that area.

In other words, get ready for a symphony of geeks to return Yahoo to relevance.

Would they can pull it off, as that would be a tune worth listening to.

Speaking of something worth listening to, here is a video of Diana Ross’ song, “Chain Reaction,” to enjoy:

The culture-celebrating hijinks continue at Yahoo, it seems.

After free food and smartphones and even dressing up as a Yahoo purple banger, CEO Marissa Mayer now has a high-ranking exec dancing for employee enjoyment.

As part of an effort to improve participation in the annual Yahoo Employee Satisfaction Survey (YESS), Mayer instituted a punishment for the lowest participation rate of any division on her executive staff.

The culprit turned out to be Jackie Reses, EVP of people and development for Yahoo, which includes the unlikely combo of human resources and business development.

Thus, Reses apparently had to dance to the hit K-pop song “Gangnam Style” with her staff at the weekly FYI employee meeting at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ on Friday.

Despite having a rep as an intense New Yorker, said one employee, Reses has some “decent moves.” Others agreed.

Also decent was one of the top results of YESS, which showed that employee belief in the future vision of the company was up 32 points year over year.

That’s not a big surprise, given the upward trajectory of Yahoo’s shares of late. But, more to the point, it has a weak comparable in last year’s survey, which painted a picture of a deeply demoralized workplace. That’s because the 2011 YESS questions went out to employees the week that the company fired CEO Carol Bartz, with most of the responses gathered in the ensuing weeks.

Despite the improvement, this year’s YESS also still showed a lot of worry about whether Yahoo leadership can execute, and whether the company can achieve strong results over the long term.

[UPDATE: One reader said the Yahoo survey is now called YEES, the Yahoo Employee Engagement Survey. I could not determine if that name change had been made.]

That’s the question that at least one Wall Street firm was asking, in a downgrade of Yahoo stock today. In dropping Yahoo’s rank to “market-perform,” Sanford C. Bernstein analysts noted worries about its turnaround efficacy, a possibly jarring reorg of its advertising unit, and also whether the future sale of its assets in China’s Alibaba Group can save the day again, as it did for last quarter’s results.

“We think there may be upside from an eventual Alibaba IPO at a valuation much higher than $50B or a Yahoo! core turn-around, but it is hard to have high conviction in either given the facts we currently have,” said the report, in part. “In addition, there is manageable but real downside risk: reorganization (e.g., of the sales force) could be negative for revenues, management could decide to invest in growth now and cut excess later, and MSFT RPS guarantee could expire without a renewal.”

Those are all good questions for investors to ask, of course, although more have been caught up in the hype/hope ahead of actual performance gains.

Still, it’s no sweat to get caught up in digital execs being made to trip the light fantastic for their weak results. So, since I was not there to enjoy Reses’ performance, click here for an also fun-tastic JibJab Gangnam video I made of her.

New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer took to the stage today at the Silicon Valley Internet company’s URL’s Café on its Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ campus to outline — in very broad strokes — her plans for the future.

Very broad, as it turned out, and full of corporate bromides that many in attendance said were very well delivered by the former Google exec.

What she did not show, although Mayer had promised “an act of radical transparency”: Highly specific plans for overhauling search and email, as well as an in-process and dramatic home page redesign. She also said little about what she is going to do with Yahoo’s recent cash haul from its sale of part of its stake in China’s Alibaba.

Instead, it was big picture all the way, with a lot of small details. (It also bears a strong resemblance to plans once pushed by former product chief Blake Irving.)

First and perhaps most importantly, Mayer tried to answer that age-old question of what Yahoo was/is/will be.

Apparently, to Mayer, Yahoo is a company that excels at personalization in its various arenas, from email to content to advertising.

Her goals: To grow users and usage, as well as advertisers and talent, using personalization.

How Mayer was going to do this was a lot more squishy, but her strategy bullets included:

• Yahoo becoming a part of users’ everyday routines.
• A focus on core competencies (whatever that is!).
• Being friendly to partners across a range of companies from mobile carriers to social networks to hardware makers.
• A focus on shifting Yahoo’s platform to mobile.
• An emphasis on thinking big and at scale, which Mayer called the “Rule of 100 Million.” It presumably means attract that much of an audience to various products going forward.
• And, of course, a new push to move faster and take ownership for your work.

Mayer spent a good amount of time talking about this, as well as getting away from what one person described as “consensus culture” and taking too much time to get products out the door.

Increasing feedback loops was also important to Mayer.

If it all sounds a little Tony Robbins, it is, especially Mayer’s focus on what she called the “4 C’s” for talent at Yahoo.

They are: Culture, company goals, calibration (I have no idea what that is, frankly) and compensation.

Yahoo, I am sure, liked that part, although to get more of that, Mayer needs to probably paint a much more specific plan for investors to get excited about.

One expression of that strategy — and a controversial one at that — was the nearly $12 billion acquisition of the British software firm Autonomy, announced 13 months ago. HP ultimately didn’t spin off its PC business, but its acquisition of Autonomy stuck. Now it is firmly part of HP’s software business.

As CEO Meg Whitman struggles to turn HP around, software is still a key part of her plans. While Whitman has made no secret of her opinion that Autonomy needs attention, there are some solid bits of HP’s software business — like Vertica and ArcSight — that are showing significant promise, if only they could grow.

Finding a way to get them growing is the job of George Kadifa. In June, HP named him as executive vice president, head of the company’s software business and a member of its executive council. Kadifa knows a bit about the software business. He spent seven years as a senior vice president at Oracle, and then ran his own company, Corio, for six years, until it was acquired by IBM for $182 million in 2005. From there, he went to investment firm Silver Lake, where, as partner, he pushed portfolio companies to improve their operations.

Kadifa sat down with AllThingsD last week at the software unit’s new headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., for his first interview since joining HP. We talked about how he plans to fix its weaknesses, improve its strengths and make software a more sizable piece of HP’s overall business.

AllThingsD: George, you joined HP to head up its software business unit in June. You’ve reached the 100-day mark, so give us your assessment of where you see things now and where they’re going.

Kadifa: A lot of good things are happening. We’re at about $4 billion in revenue, so if you look at HP Software as its own business, we’re about the fifth- or sixth-largest software business in the world. We have a great customer base; having worked at IBM and Oracle and now HP, customers really like us, versus previous experience. And we have a lot of products. A lot of them we acquired rather than built in-house.

Among the recent acquisitions, Vertica is one where the consensus seems to be that it was a pretty good deal. Where do you see Vertica going in particular, and what sets it apart?

One is the technology, which we think is second to none. When you think about it, the idea of taking data in columns and then arranging it in a row fashion, it seems like sort of a trivial difference. But it’s really unbelievable what it gives you in terms of capabilities. Say you’re storing a thousand names, you’ve got first names and last names. Let’s say five of those guys are named Arik. Normally you’d store five Ariks in a column. But here, instead of listing the name five times, you make a note above it with a five, so you know the name occurs five times. Now when you search through that list it’s so much more efficient, it’s two or three orders of magnitude faster, which means it’s 100 to 1,000 times faster than classic relationional technology. It has turned out to be a real diamond for us.

Yet it’s a small diamond. Yes, it’s growing, but how do you get it to grow fast enough that it becomes a more meaningful part of HP?

It’s a fair question. What we started with was a business with revenue in the low millions. It wasn’t in the $100 million range in revenue. It was really a project with some customers. We took it, and now it’s in the middle-double-digit millions. I can see us getting to $100 million with Vertica in a very short period of time. And there’s no reason it can’t be a billion-dollar business.

Let’s wrestle with the situation at Autonomy a little. You just named Robert Youngjohns to run it. Unlike Vertica, the consensus here is that Autonomy was an expensive deal that hasn’t come close to meeting expectations yet. What do you see happening there?

We just had a two-day planning meeting with everyone from Autonomy, where we went through the current status and looked at where we’re heading. The key for us right now is to get fiscal year 2013 on track, and that starts Nov. 1, so we’re working on that right now. Basically, when you look at Autonomy, the core unit is the IDOL Engine, which is the unique capability of meaning-based computing. We’re going to double down on that. In our labs in Cambridge, England, we have 40 or 50 mathematicians writing algorithms. And we’re going to build a team here in the U.S. to productize it and create a platform around it, because it has that potential. Frankly, the way Autonomy was managed previously, they put a lot more emphasis into enabling applications, which was fine, but our belief is that there’s a broad agenda, which is creating a platform around meaning-based computing. So we will maintain those apps, but at the same time we’ll open up the capabilities to a broader set of players outside HP.

It sounds like what Autonomy was doing was growing by acquisitions and then creating a more vertical stack of applications prior to HP’s ownership, rather than taking a broader, more horizontal approach. It sounds to me like HP wants to make Autonomy more horizontal. Is the potential there?

You’re correct. And, yes, the potential is there. I asked Autonomy that very question about why they went vertical instead of horizontal, and the answer that I got was that it came down to a difference of culture between the U.S. and Europe. In Europe, they tend to make things complex in order to create more value. For example, they saw the IDOL engine as too complex to just give it to people. Instead they thought they should acquire vendors and then create value by enabling applications. Here we take something that’s complex and we ask how we might simplify it in order to give it more scale for a bigger market. So, some of that difference was cultural, and some of it was that I think they fell in love with these acquisitions. … We think Autonomy’s technology has broader implications. And to reach that potential, we have to open it up as much as possible. And we’re also working with other organizations inside HP — PCs, printers, servers — to basically produce additional synergies.

Are the teams ready and primed? Meg Whitman, your CEO, and CFO Cathie Lesjak have made no secret that, so far, they have seen Autonomy’s ability to respond to deals that had been teed up by HP as lacking. Is the structure in place to address that problem?

It’s not in place yet, but the situation has settled down somewhat. The processes are working. The reason is that initially we kind of left Autonomy alone, and then we tossed a bunch of deals at Autonomy. The initial plan was to keep it intact, have the HP salesforce bring in deals, and everyone would be happy. One problem is that there were too many deals, and second is that the deals weren’t well-qualified. So what we did next was put in place a management process around sales cycles at Autonomy.

There’s been a lot of turnover there. Obviously, the former CEO, Mike Lynch, left, but so did a lot of the people who worked with him. Does that hurt the institutional memory at all?

No. Basically we lost the top half-dozen people. And you always expect that with an acquisition, especially with people who have grown up as entrepreneurs and will always be entrepreneurs. The remaining people running the products lines are still around, and so is the salesforce. The development guys in Cambridge and Chicago are still there.

Michael Dell has basically said he intends to keep growing his company by acquisition. Your boss, Meg, has said that we can expect no major acquisitions for the forseeable future — at least until the balance sheet is in better shape. If there were going to be acquisitions, even small ones, I would imagine they’d more likely be in software. Is that a fair statement?

I don’t want to say anything on Meg’s behalf. From a software point of view, if there are tuck-in acquisitions that can help us develop our technology, I’ll go and request to do it. The cash we generate from software would cover us. So that’s the thinking right now. We need to learn as a business how to grow organically because that’s where all the value is. At Silver Lake we did analysis on companies that grew by acquisition: Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, IBM, EMC and others. You find that their revenues grow and their profits grow. But what doesn’t grow, and what actually shrank from 2006 to 2011, is their multiples. Their valuations multiples shrank. What the market is saying is that just making acquisitions doesn’t add any value unless they create organic growth. That is how we look at it here. We’ve done a ton of acquisitions, so the task now is to create more organic growth because that is what the market will value.

Remember the infamous “Peanut Manifesto,” in which former Yahoo exec Brad Garlinghouse likened the company’s innovation process to peanut butter?

In it, he wrote:

“I’ve heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: A thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular. I hate peanut butter. We all should.”

Not new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who has cooked up a new recipe for the longtime company albatross by sweetening it up.

Thus, yesterday, she sent out a new memo announcing a new sandwich topping to get the Silicon Valley Internet giant moving again: PB&J.

That stands for “Process, Bureaucracy & Jams,” and it is kind of like a city’s pothole alert line, except with more geeky pep.

Wrote Mayer and Patricia Moll Kriese — the ex-Googler who is now senior director of corporate projects at Yahoo — in a memo to employees, in part:

“Do you see a problem and know how to solve it? Want to brainstorm with colleagues about what to fix and how to fix it? Give us your ideas. Or be heard loud and clear by simply voting.”

In the missive, the pair also noted that besides the free food and new Friday FYI staff meetings, both of which I have previously reported on, the new leadership of Yahoo has been busy with some other stuff.

That apparently now includes: Turning off the turnstiles in building D at its Sunnyvale HQ, removing parking lot barriers, eliminating mandatory orientation at the gym.

(Yahoo really has been hopelessly bureaucratic, if it is requiring engineers to get schooled on how to work an exercise bike.)

In any case, it’s another interesting idea from Mayer to instill more ease and transparency to logistical aspects of running Yahoo (except when it comes to talking to media, of course — in that case, it’s awfully dark in here!).

These are important culture changes, of course, but the real rubber hitting the road will be what major execs Mayer brings in from elsewhere to really foment managerial change and innovation.

Sources say that at least one big hire is happening soon, with Mayer looking at candidates from “outside the box” from the regular suspects in the industry.

She has certainly been active in buttonholing important tech players on the subject over the last month, said sources, and asking for their input — from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg to former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel to a variety of others.

So far, her outside hires have been from Google, including Kriese (pictured here). While she had been listed as a project manager at Google, several sources said her last contracted job there was primarily to organize the annual trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, for top execs at the search behemoth. Apparently, Kriese is a whiz with a spreadsheet in marshaling the tetchy potentates of Google, so PB&J seems right up her alley.

Here’s the full memo:

From: Marissa Mayer
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2012 10:00 PM
To: [All Yahoo]
Cc: Patricia Moll Kriese
Subject: Announcing PB&J — Process, Bureaucracy, & Jams!

YAHOO! PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION — DO NOT FORWARD

Process blocking your success?

Bureaucracy getting you down?

Jammed by problems and see a solution? We are looking at how to streamline process, reduce bureaucracy, and remove jams — PB&J!

We’re launching PB&J today to gather your feedback on how to make Yahoo! the absolute best place to work. Share your ideas on what would make your job easier, boost your productivity and help solve problems.

What’s on your wish list for our corporate culture and work environment?

For example:

* GitHub for Code Review

* Dogfooding Yahoo! Mail & Calendar

* SSD’s (Solid State Drives) for faster machines

* Mi-Fi’s (mobile wi-fi cards)

We have done a few things already — free food, FYI, turning off the turnstiles in building D, removing parking lot barriers, eliminating mandatory orientation at the gym, etc. However, we know there’s more we can do!

Do you see a problem and know how to solve it? Want to brainstorm with colleagues about what to fix and how to fix it? Give us your ideas. Or be heard loud and clear by simply voting.

PB&J is available globally on Backyard: http://allhands.corp.yahoo.com/qna/pbj/latest

We will review your ideas and votes, reporting back in FYI each month on
actions taken. August PB&J starts now — and look forward to an update at
the next FYI in early September!

Questions/concerns/suggestions around PB&J, please contact Patricia Moll
Kriese, who’s our lead on PB&J.

Marissa & Patricia

And here is my fave depiction of PB&J, in the fantastically addictive “It’s Peanut Butter Jelly Time” dance:

New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer descended on two of its New York offices today, declaring that she would summarily be granting free food to all there as she had recently done to much acclaim at its Silicon Valley HQ.

After firmly establishing herself as the munificent provider of free Odwalla juices for all, the former Google exec plunged into much more serious topics with the group of Manhattan-based employees. The New York staff is mostly focused on advertising — Yahoo’s most important business.

A number of Yahoo senior execs, as well as its several hundred others, were there to hear Mayer for the first time since she got the job about a month ago in a surprise and very high-profile hire, beating out media-focused candidate Ross Levinsohn.

In any case, Mayer seemed to be talking the language of the crowd, noting that Yahoo was an advertising company first and foremost.

A key area of focus is obviously display, she noted, as well as improving its ad network efforts. Mayer also told those gathered that the mobile strategy for Yahoo has moved around way too much, which is a nice way of saying there has been pretty much no direction under past CEOs.

Indeed, mobile efforts have been a longtime weakness of Yahoo.

Mostly, though, it was the same kind of things the energetic former Google exec has been saying to the Yahoos at its Sunnyvale HQ: Faster decisions, more accountability for top execs, hipper culture, all-hands meetings, question-rich involvement for employees.

In other words, in a performance coming soon to a Broadway theater: Google Clone — The Yahoo Edition.

One notable new aside Mayer made, several sources noted, was that she was not going to be answering the perennial query that has tripped up its leaders for years now: What is Yahoo?

She apparently does not like this line of inquiry one little bit and told the crowd it was not the right way to look at the long-troubled company or how to define it.

Now I am intrigued, since she is essentially correct in the concept that Yahoo is about what it does well more than anything else.

Not being able to execute has been a long-time issue for Yahoo, which has stumbled from one thing to the next in a much less disciplined manner than all of its competitors.

That said, every one of them still clearly communicates a basic core promise via strong execution, even as each has added on new businesses, for example:

Google = fab search, Amazon = top-notch retail, Apple = elegant devices, Microsoft = dominant Windows, Facebook = best social networking.

Yahoo — which ousted CEO Scott Thompson dubbed a technology-enabled media company (and he was right on that score) — has, of course, been about too many things, from a directory to an advertising service to a content provider and distributor.

Mucking up the works, though, have been a thousand other lesser efforts not done well and most of which have petered out.

In any case, the simple question of what Yahoo is has been banish’d for now, and Mayer will presumably not be answering that nettlesome query, even if it bubbles up on her nifty new interactive employee Q&A system.

But, if you really want to know, I can tell you exactly what it is at this moment in time and going forward: Yahoo is whatever Marissa Mayer says it will be.

More to come on exactly what that means.

Until then, here is my favorite quote from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” about being banish’d:

Hence-banished is banish’d from the world, And world’s exile is death: then banished, Is death mis-term’d: calling death banishment, Thou cutt’st my head off with a golden axe, And smilest upon the stroke that murders me.

As I just reported, former interim CEO Ross Levinsohn is leaving Yahoo.

Here’s the memo that its new CEO, former Google exec, Marissa Mayer just sent out to the troops, which is a very classy one, as well as Levinsohn’s adieu to staff and the regulatory documents that the Silicon Valley Internet giant filed about the departure with the Securities and Exchange Commission:

Subject: Thank You to Ross Levinsohn

Do Not Forward

I am writing to let you know that Ross Levinsohn will be leaving the company at the end of July.

Ross has been an important and powerful contributor at Yahoo since he joined in 2010. During May and June, Ross stepped into an incredibly tough role as interim CEO and did a terrific job — he really helped keep the company moving, closed important deals, and assembled a very talented team. I am very grateful to Ross for his leadership and work throughout his tenure at Yahoo. His contributions will be missed.

Ross will be in Sunnyvale tomorrow (Tuesday, July 31). Please take the opportunity to drop by and thank him for all he has done for the company. I hope you can join me in wishing Ross well and letting him know how much you’ve appreciated him as a colleague.

– Marissa

I wanted to let you know that my time at Yahoo has come to an end. It has been an incredible journey for me and I could not be prouder of what we accomplished over the past few years helping define Yahoo as a leader in digital media and advertising. Yahoo is an amazing brand and company, and I leave knowing we did all we could to help inform and entertain more than 700 million users each month. Leading this company has been one of the best experiences of my career, but it is time for me to look for the next challenge.

– Ross

YHOO-20120730-8K-20120726

As I previously reported he likely would, top Yahoo exec Ross Levinsohn — who lost the CEO race to former Google exec Marissa Mayer — is leaving the company, according to several sources.

Mayer also just sent a note to the company about the departure, added a multitude of other sources across the company.

(Update: Yahoo just filed regulatory documents about the separation, noting severance agreements that total many millions of dollars.

And the company also released a statement confirming the departure: “Ross has done a terrific job during his time at Yahoo!. We wish him all the best.”

Levinsohn also had a memo to staff, which is also below.)

Levinsohn, who took over as interim CEO in the wake of the ouster of Scott Thompson earlier this year, had been running the Americas unit of the Silicon Valley Internet giant. That put him in charge of key Yahoo businesses, including its media and advertising sales divisions.

Levinsohn and Mayer have been negotiating his exit for several days, sources said, which is not surprising given the awkward circumstance between them.

While Mayer might have benefited from Levinsohn’s close ties with key marketing players and his content experience, her intense focus on products and not on media likely means that she will rely on a more tech-heavy leadership team going forward.

It will be interesting to see who she picks going forward. As I previously reported, many think she will pull from the ranks of former and current Google execs, where she worked for her entire career before Yahoo.

Levinsohn does not apparently have any current plans for another gig, but as an experienced and very well-liked online media exec, he will likely have many options.

He came to Yahoo in late 2010, replacing Hilary Schneider, in the regime of Carol Bartz, who was later fired.

Levinsohn arrived at Yahoo from Fuse Capital, where he worked with Jon Miller — now chief digital officer at News Corp. — in funding digital media and communications start-ups.

But, until his Yahoo job, Levinsohn was probably best known for his stint running digital operations for News Corp.’s then Fox Interactive Media unit.

It was at FIM that he rose to prominence after he bought Myspace, the social networking site that was once the hottest property on the Web.

At the time, Levinsohn and other execs also struck a gigantically lucrative advertising search deal with Google that garnered Myspace huge revenues.

After leaving News Corp. — after repeated clashes with Myspace co-founder and then CEO Chris DeWolfe — he partnered with Miller in another investment company, Velocity Capital.

Ironically, both Miller and Levinsohn were the top choices of billionaire shareholder activist Carl Icahn as the execs he wanted to run Yahoo when he was agitating for change there a few years back in the midst of the failed takeover attempt by Microsoft.

Fast forward several years, with Levinsohn losing his shot as CEO of Yahoo, after yet another hedge fund manager — Dan Loeb of Third Point, who waged a Yahoo proxy fight that ended in him getting seats on the board — strongly backed Mayer for the job instead of Levinsohn.

Levinsohn never had a chance against the tech-star resume of Mayer, of course. But, for his time of taking over Yahoo after the crisis around the ouster of Thompson over a fake computer science degree on his bio alone — a rocky period for the company, to be sure — Levinsohn probably deserves a lot of kudos from Yahoo’s board.

More to come, obviously.

But here is the Mayer note about Levinsohn’s departure in full:

Subject: Thank You to Ross Levinsohn

Do Not Forward

I am writing to let you know that Ross Levinsohn will be leaving the company at the end of July.

Ross has been an important and powerful contributor at Yahoo since he joined in 2010. During May and June, Ross stepped into an incredibly tough role as interim CEO and did a terffic job — he really helped keep the company moving, closed important deals, and assembled a very talented team. I am very grateful to Ross for his leadership and work throughout his tenure at Yahoo. His contributions will be missed.

Ross will be in Sunnyvale tomorrow (Tuesday, July 31). Please take the opportunity to drop by and thank him for all he has done for the company. I hope you can join me in wishing Ross well and letting him know how much you’ve appreciated him as a colleague.

– Marissa

I wanted to let you know that my time at Yahoo has come to an end. It has been an incredible journey for me and I could not be prouder of what we accomplished over the past few years helping define Yahoo as a leader in digital media and advertising. Yahoo is an amazing brand and company, and I leave knowing we did all we could to help inform and entertain more than 700 million users each month. Leading this company has been one of the best experiences of my career, but it is time for me to look for the next challenge.

– Ross

At today’s all-hands meeting for Yahoo employees — in the wake of the dramatic ouster of its former CEO Scott Thompson — what pop culture icon did new interim CEO Ross Levinson use to loosen up the crowd?

Why, a little Al Pacino from the movie classic “The Godfather,” of course — the go-to guy solution menu for all troubles in the world.

Comparing the battered Silicon Valley Internet giant to Don Corleone after a gun ambush, Levinsohn said to the crowd gathered at URL’s Cafe on the Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ campus: “This weekend was like that scene from ‘The Godfather’ — ‘They hit ’im with five shots, and he’s still alive!’”

And also, trying to make Yahoos feel as if there were forward momentum: “There are things being negotiated now that are gonna solve all your problems and answer all your questions.”

Well, let’s hope so, and that it does not end for Yahoo — and Levinsohn — like it did for Luca Brasi (who sleeps with the fishes, in case you didn’t know).

So far, in his first impress-the-employees outing, the reviews for Levinsohn were largely positive on its internal message boards and from numerous sources I talked to.

What they liked: Acknowledgement of the tough past week, but not dwelling on the past, either; a theme of revival and spirit; no PowerPoint slides; and zero direct mention of Thompson.

What they really liked: The whole pile of compliments that Levinsohn doled out to the troops.

No tough-love dude he — unlike Thompson and his predecessor Carol Bartz, who liked to verbally smack around the troops a little more in a mobster kind of way.

Instead, said one person in attendance, “he was appealing to Yahoo pride, which is pretty much in the doldrums.”

Still, one questioner worried about the future and whether the company was going to still be stuck in a leadership vacuum, especially since Levinsohn was not named as the permanent CEO.

Fred Amoroso — who was just named Yahoo’s new chairman and was the only person who appeared with Levinsohn on the stage — tried to assuage that concern by saying he wanted Levinsohn to eventually become the head of the family for good.

While there will likely be a search for other CEO candidates, it is as close to a ring-kiss as Levinsohn is going to get for now.

That is, unless he does not produce some quick results on a variety of Yahoo’s thorniest issues, such as an Asian asset sale and a settlement of the patent lawsuit fight with social networking giant Facebook.

But the over/under on him and Amoroso together was good.

One person said it was important when Amoroso talked about coding and technology and products, which is not advertising- and media-focused Levinsohn’s expertise.

“It was nice to see a board member who cared about products and innovation,” said one person. “Or at least said he did.”

We’ll see how this pair works out together, but always remember this, Yahoos:

Just when you thought you were out, they pull you back in.

Until we know how the movie ends, here is a scary video of me talking about the last week’s events at Yahoo on a local ABC television news station — I look a fright since I’m so tired from covering it all:

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What is Yahoo?

While that has been the perennially unanswered question at the Silicon Valley Internet giant for many years, according to dozens of sources inside and outside the company, Yahoo’s leadership is now deeply embroiled in an intense — and sometimes very tense and fast-changing — debate over a number of critical issues about what is expected to be the most sweeping restructuring in its history.

Top executives at the company are conducting what is likely to be a lively all-day “offsite” meeting today (which is actually taking place on Yahoo’s Sunnyvale campus) to continue to discuss, among other things: How and where the company will make large-scale cuts in staff, which I have previously reported were coming and will perhaps be numbering in the thousands; which businesses to sell off and which to keep, including its ad tech unit; the correct structure for the reconfigured entity; and who will be left to run it all when it is all settled.

Also up for debate is the best course of a two-pronged effort — being led primarily by CFO Tim Morse and members of his corporate strategy team — to renegotiate its search and advertising partnership deal with Microsoft, while also engaging in active discussions with Google about it taking over Yahoo’s search business.

“Everything is on the table,” said one person. “And anything could be blown up by Scott.”

The Scott being referenced is new CEO Scott Thompson, who has become something of a whirling dervish since he arrived at Yahoo only three months ago from the top job at eBay’s PayPal unit.

If shaking up the place — as he has promised in public and internal statements, including a recent memo in which he wrote that “real change is coming” — was his aim, Thompson is certainly doing just that and more.

Along with immediately initiating a massive effort to figure out the best way to restructure the long-troubled and ever-meandering company and all that entails, Thompson has also been meeting players all over Silicon Valley for advice; stopping and then restarting negotiating discussions with Yahoo’s Asian partners, visiting major advertising clients; and engaging in talks with activist shareholder Dan Loeb about settling a looming proxy fight, while also packing the board with allies to help fend off said battle.

And, oh yes, he also took a little time out from his busy schedule to sue Yahoo partner Facebook for patent violations.

But the real action is the remaking of Yahoo in his image. To do so, Thompson has been furiously evaluating the entire company, with the help of Boston Consulting Group and a small group of execs, especially Morse.

While it is all still undecided, he seems to be leaning toward Yahoo as a drastically slimmed-down entity without a central product group and with a simplified structure that includes global units — such as media, commerce and sales organizations — which will again be in charge of the entire development of their offerings.

(I will note, since I have been covering Yahoo since near its founding, this is a structure that has been in place before. In other words, at least for dinosaurs like me, there is nothing new under the sun here.)

The changes being contemplated include, as I have written previously, the possible sale or drastic reconfiguration of its ad technology business, which will effect at least 1,000 employees. Another 1,500 involved in Yahoo’s search business will also be impacted, depending on talks the company has been having with Microsoft, as well as Google, about better monetization.

Such a structure brings up a lot of questions about how, and by whom, it will be run. To figure it out, Thompson has been evaluating — sometimes rather brusquely — his own top managers, as well as looking for new ones outside the company, such as a search for a chief marketing officer and other key positions.

Confused? Perhaps, but not for much longer, said multiple sources, as Thompson moves closer to delivering his answer to the what-Yahoo-is question.

Yahoo PR — by the way, it will not escape Thompson’s change machine, either! — declined comment.

A hot Internet company poised for an even hotter IPO is attacked in court by a competitor whose lunch it has been eating.

Sound familiar? Actually, it’s just as much Google in 2004 as Facebook yesterday.

What the pair have in common is Yahoo, for whom this kind of patent infringement lawsuit is a whole lot of been there, done that.

In Google’s case, Yahoo was suing the then-smaller company over search patents from its Overture acquisition. The pair settled 10 days before the Google IPO, with Yahoo getting 2.7 million more shares of that stock, which it then sold off relatively quickly.

As part of the settlement from a lawsuit started in 2002, Google licensed U.S. Patent No. 6,269,361, entitled “System and method for influencing a position on a search result list generated by a computer network search engine,” which was owned by Yahoo Overture subsidiary.

In plain terms, the patent was over its key pay-for-performance service, which was at the heart of Google’s business of allowing bidding for search results placement related to relevant keywords.

In Facebook’s lawsuit, Yahoo is alleging intellectual property violations by the social networking giant, and is also taking credit for Facebook’s success.

The 19-page lawsuit over 10 patents — related to advertising, privacy, customization, messaging and social networking — comes as Yahoo is seeking to right itself under new CEO Scott Thompson.

“Facebook’s entire social network model, which allows users to create profiles for and connect with, among other things, persons and businesses, is based on Yahoo’s patented social networking technology,” Yahoo’s lawsuit reads, in part.

(Cue the movie script: If Yahoo had invented Facebook, it would have invented Facebook.)

That includes, Yahoo alleges, Facebook’s popular News Feed, advertising methods, privacy settings and more. The company adds that Facebook has been “free riding” on Yahoo’s intellectual property, and that royalty payments alone will not suffice.

What happens next today will be interesting — way back when, Google finally gave in in the delicate game of chicken with Yahoo, at the last minute.

But it’s not clear whether Facebook will flinch — or not.

Until we find out, here’s the press release from the 2004 settlement between Yahoo and Google to peruse:

Yahoo! and Google Resolve Disputes

SUNNYVALE, CA & MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — August 9, 2004 – Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) and Google Inc. today announced that the companies have resolved two disputes that have been pending between the companies.

Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Google will take a license to U.S. Patent No. 6,269,361 and several related patents, held by Yahoo!’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Overture, and Yahoo! dismissed its patent lawsuit against Google. The two parties have also resolved a dispute regarding shares issuable to Yahoo! pursuant to a warrant to purchase Google shares in connection with a 2000 services agreement.

In connection with the settlement of the warrant dispute, the patent lawsuit, and in payment for the license, Google issued shares of its Class A common stock to Yahoo!.

Earlier this week, Rich Riley — the nattily dressed SVP and managing director of Yahoo’s EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region — sent an email to his staff that he was stepping down from that top role at the company.

But, unlike other high-ranking execs who have departed the Silicon Valley Internet company of late, Riley wrote: “I sincerely hope to remain with Yahoo! once the transition is complete and am working with [CEO Scott Thompson] and team to find my next big challenge.”

Leave it to Rich to be novel! (My sincere hope is that he’ll be bringing those slim-cut Zegna blazers to Yahoo’s Sunnyvale HQ.)

Here’s the entire Riley goodbye-to-Europe email below:

Hey Team,

I wanted to quickly update you on my personal plans. After an amazing 4+ years in London and Geneva, my wife and I have decided that it’s time to bring our European adventure to a close and move on to our next phase back in the US. We plan to move by the end of the summer in time for the kids to start the school year. As a family, we can’t believe we are going to leave such an amazing place, but those timeless forces of being close to family have led us to the conclusion that it’s time for us to move back. Professionally, I will find it so hard to say goodbye to this amazing team and this impressive business that we’ve built together.

Over the past four years we’ve fundamentally turned around this region. We figured out how to grow revenue and be a leading seller of display advertising and are now taking share in nearly every market in which we operate. We figured out that we had to get onto global product platforms to compete and that transition is nearly complete and our audience metrics are at all-time highs and growing rapidly. We figured out that there were huge opportunities in expansion markets and the Middle East and have executed against them. But most impressively to me by far is the team that we have assembled. A team that from country to country is seen as among the strongest in the market and has the highest morale of any team at Yahoo! I am very proud of this team and will miss you most of all.

The reason for communicating this now is that we need to start the search for my successor. We will search internally and externally with a clear mandate to find an amazing leader that can take our great business to the next level and grow revenues to $1 billion and beyond … The future for the EMEA Region is going to be fantastic.

As for me, I sincerely hope to remain with Yahoo! once the transition is complete and am working with Scott and team to find my next big challenge.

Until then, I’m 100% focused as always and we’ll have plenty of chances to say goodbye. It has been a true honor to work with all of you.

Best,

Rich

Yahoo celebrated its 17th birthday last Friday and — in spite of some seriously troubling changes going on at the Silicon Valley Internet giant — the fantastic employees got together for a flash mob of dancing.

Set to a number of songs, including the catchy “Jai Ho!” from “Slumdog Millionaire,” a group took over the URL’s Cafe on the main campus in Sunnyvale and let it fly.

(Thanks to Yahoo Chief Product Officer Blake Irving for the tip on the video via Twitter.)

This would be the second round of cuts in the webOS group. The first came in September and affected about 500 people, bringing the total to about 775 since former CEO Léo Apotheker announced HP’s intention to end production of webOS hardware, after sales at Best Buy and other retailers failed to gain traction.

The webOS business has been a particularly difficult subject at HP. The company acquired Palm for $1.2 billion in 2010 under former CEO Mark Hurd. In a November filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, HP said about half of a $3.3 billion in write-down came in the webOS unit.

HP just issued the following statement on the subject and it appears that some will get a chance to be redeployed elsewhere within the company. But make no mistake, most of those affected are being laid off:

“As webOS continues the transition from making mobile devices to open source software, it no longer needs many of the engineering and other related positions that it required before. This creates a smaller and more nimble team that is well-equipped to deliver an open source webOS and sustain HP’s commitment to the software over the long term.

HP is working to redeploy employees affected by these changes to other roles at the company.”

The cuts come after two key events in the webOS group’s recent history. One was the departure of former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein, which was first reported by AllThingsD on Jan. 27.

Before that came the decision, announced in December by HP CEO Meg Whitman, to take the webOS software that Palm had developed and turn it into an open source project.

Here’s the news that came out of a meeting that newborn Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson had yesterday afternoon with the VP-and-above staff of the Silicon Valley Internet giant:

No. 1: Yahoo is both a media and tech company.

No. 2: His focus for the next four weeks will be internal meetings and getting to know the staff.

No. 3: Thompson uses the following Yahoo products — email, finance and news.

No. 4: He is very good at explaining what eBay’s PayPal — where he just served as its president — is.

“If he can do that, maybe he can let us all finally know what Yahoo is, too,” joked one VP, referencing the well-known difficulty Yahoo’s CEOs have had with clearly defining the company’s mission.

But Thompson — whom every single person I spoke to called a “nice guy” — declined to say much about the stuff everyone really wanted to know, from the Asian assets (no comment!) to the possible investments by private equity firms (no comment!) and more (no comment!).

Most VPs I interviewed seemed to have a wait-and-see attitude about Thompson, who is not the kind of high-profile hire some had expected. Of prime worry: The steep learning curve he might have, in a time that requires urgency.

“He’s not the game-changer, but he seems very competent,” said another VP. “We’ll see.”

Indeed, we will. And, to start, Thompson is on display for the entire Yahoo staff at an all-hands employee meeting on Yahoo’s Sunnyvale campus, which is taking place right now.

More to come on that soon, as my embeds call in reports! (Was my invite lost in the mail? Not very nice!)

While wandering around Yahoo’s campus in Sunnyvale, Calif. — where I had several fingers pointed at me, although it’s not polite to do so — for its annual Product Runway event last week, I got to spend a few minutes with its Chief Product Officer Blake Irving.

Irving, as you will see here, remains an upbeat and even jaunty figure at the troubled Silicon Valley Internet giant — even though his job has been made a quantum level more difficult by the swirl around the possible sale of Yahoo and its leadership morass.

Add to that major attrition and morale issues, especially in its product engineering staff, at the very same time Yahoo needs to prove that it can launch innovative products to keep up with the Googles, Facebooks and others.

That’s Irving’s thankless job, which was why he was touting a number of products last week, including Yahoo’s Livestand news reader that was finally released to the public.

Here he is talking about that and more in an interview with me, including the fact that he will not be bidding for Yahoo (I had to ask!):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111107/a-few-questions-for-yahoo-product-dude-blake-irving-who-thankfully-does-not-want-to-make-a-bid-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111102/liveblogging-yahoos-product-runway-are-you-in-or-out/ http://allthingsd.com/20111102/liveblogging-yahoos-product-runway-are-you-in-or-out/#comments Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:41:24 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=139502

I am here at Yahoo HQ in Sunnyvale, Calif., to check out “Product Runway,” which is the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s attempt to show that it can still innovate.

First and foremost is the launch of Livestand, a personalized news reader that is similar to Flipboard and a variety of other rivals, including — soon — Google.

It’s Yahoo’s attempt to present a business-as-usual feel — amidst a long and agonizing and very public strategic overview that might also include the sale of the company (or not!), in the wake of the recent firing of its last CEO, Carol Bartz.

It has caused a lot of trauma inside Yahoo, which can’t help with innovation.

But we press on!

In other words, despite the three-ring circus going on outside, Yahoo wants you to know it is still hard at work.

We begin:

10:35 am: As the strains of U2 die out, Yahoo Chief Product Officer Blake Irving takes the stage, which is actually set up in the company’s cafeteria. I can smell lunch being made nearby and I am hungry.

Apt — Yahoo certainly needs to show off a lot of cool stuff or its fate will be cooked.

No pressure, Blake!

“Personally, I am more bullish on Yahoo today,” he said. “What is Yahoo? Simple. It’s the premier digital media company. Period. Stop.”

Oh, if it were only that easy.

10:46 am: Irving pulls out his favorite slide, which looks like a chemistry test. It lists the various elements of the product strategy, with things like personalization, mobile, premium.

Now to Livestand, which is available on the Apple iTunes app store right now.

Don’t all rush at once!

Irving notes that Livestand is more than just an app — it is a platform.

In other words, Yahoo wants to help publishers publish online. Kind of a Facebook of content.

If Yahoo can pull it off, that is. (And, of course, unless Facebook decides to do the same.)

10:50 am: Livestand is an HTML5 “personalized living magazine.”

“This is the way Web pages are going to look,” declares Irving. Which is to say, heavy on photos, swoopy navigation, a television screen-like interface.

Irving uses the example of Surfer magazine, which is a good idea since waves always look pretty. Especially in a video-in-frame with Kelly Slater in Hawaii.

But, in essence, for anyone who has used Flipboard for years now, none of this is entirely different.

10:54 am: The look of what would be the Yahoo News page is actually much more interesting, since it is clearly a whole lot better than the Web page.

Irving also shows off a “living ad” — in this case, an unusually snuggly couple on a couch. It is cool, but creepy.

When launched, the ad has tap points. Irving — naughtily declaring about what is an ad, “I’ll tap that” — taps the lady’s butt, which would also have been my move. We learn about the jeans, of course.

10:58 am: Irving then shows off the ability to add feeds.

Next, something called “Cocktails.” First up, a developer tool called Yahoo Mojito and Yahoo Manhattan, which is a hosting service. The company will open-source both the technologies in 2012.

Irving brings up Mike Kerns, VP of Personalization & Social, who came to Yahoo when it bought the innovative sports fan site called Citizen Sports.

“We like to ship sh#t,” he notes. I like Mike Kerns immediately.

Kerns intros C.O.R.E. No, it is not a secret government organization that takes out fussy bloggers, who might be more critical than Yahoo execs would like.

In fact, it stands for “content optimization relevance engine.” Of course it does.

Simply put, C.O.R.E. is trying to link the right content or whatever to the right consumers and who likes what. Ladies like this, dudes like this. Apparently, “men of multiple ages” enjoy stories about golden chicken.

11:11 am: Kerns is moving on to social, especially its integration with Facebook. While much touted, sources tell me it has gone slower than expected in terms of use, but that it is improving.

Kerns talks about the idea of matching content to conversations to interests and, well, you know — the now exhausting world of modern media consumption.

The world in which you can no longer simply read an article and enjoy it — you must comment, share, discuss, parse, tweet.

Does anyone remember when you read something cool and just kept it to yourself?

Forget it, pal! It is a full-information society now and you better get on board and start poking your friends about every little thing.

(Personally, I plan on becoming a hermit in 3 … 2 … 1.)

11:18 am: Now Tim Parsey, who is Yahoo’s design head. He is hands down the most delightful exec the company has had in a while, mostly because he loves to smirk adorkably.

He shows off Yahoo’s first original design, which was a dull list. And then another really bad logo. But Parsey loves it! It’s kitschy!

Smirk attack!

Parsey moves into what has to happen now, which is to deliver a much more emotional experience and a much better designed one. He uses words like “humanism.”

Say what? He is right — Yahoo has for too long completely ignored design as an important part of the experience.

That’s why Flipboard was so quickly touted — it was pretty and fun. And it is why everyone is simply forced to love Apple products.

11:22 am: Parsey even has a code for it, called REM — for rational, emotional and meaningful.

He shows off a weather app. People take photos and they can be used in the app. Then Yahoo Mail for the iPad, whic is also handsome with photos and video. Livestand, also pretty.

“Great way to differentiate,” says Parsey. He calls it “one Yahoo!” Indeed.

11:35 am: I’ll admit it. After Parsey-fest, I zoned out for a sec when IntoNow dude, Adam Cahan, comes up.

Donut emergency!

Back to IntoNow, it’s the television indexing service that Yahoo bought in April.

Essentially, more ways to watch the media — in this case, video — and do 53 other things at the very same time. Memo to humanity: We will all be paying continuous partial attention for the rest of eternity.

Like I said: Hermitage!

11:41 am: Product dude Irving is back, making a point that, despite all the public mishegas, Yahoo has been busy at innovating.

A redo of email, better search, social “Facebar” with Facebook, Flickr for Google Android.

Irving is correct — Yahoo’s engineers have been hard at work and deserve kudos for doing so, even with attrition issues, stock declines and questions about the company’s very future being debated daily.

The problem is that too many of these improvements are mostly incremental and essentially table stakes for tech companies, most of whom have introed many more significant innovations in the same time frame as Yahoo has.

Google did Android, Google+ (as well as some notable failures). Microsoft did Kinect, Windows Phone, Windows 8. Amazon did Kindle Fire. Facebook did a range of major updates, as it has grown like a weed.

And there’s Apple. You might have heard of the iPhone and the iPad.

You get my point. Yahoo’s Product Runway today is well done, but what it really needs to be is just the beginning of a take-off.

11:48 am: Now Q&A time.

The first question is what took so long to get Livestand out, the second is why should people use Livestand since Flipboard and others have already been around for a dog’s age.

I ask about design — mostly because I want Parsey to use the word “delicious” a lot — and also about all the turmoil around the company and its impact on product creation. (I decide not to mention that Yahoo blew its acquisition of the bookmarking site, Delicious, and then sold it.)

Parsey delivers on the delicious scale, noting that Yahoo must have one design experience and yet has a lot of different interfaces. In other words, it cannot be Apple, but it can feel a lot more cohesive.

Irving talks a little bit around the obvious elephant in the room — the future of Yahoo — noting that the product staff was trying to focus and forget the storm going on outside.

“We have dreams about what this company can be,” says Irving.

You and me both, brother.

12:04 pm: More questions that are too detailed for my tastes, since they have delivered lunch and I can see it and I am ravenous.

As Parsey might say: It looks deliiiiiccccious.

Now, let’s hope Yahoo can do even more tasty stuff.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111102/liveblogging-yahoos-product-runway-are-you-in-or-out/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110930/only-one-yahoo-fearless-leader-note-this-week-please-ignore-the-un-ignorable-rumors/ http://allthingsd.com/20110930/only-one-yahoo-fearless-leader-note-this-week-please-ignore-the-un-ignorable-rumors/#comments Sat, 01 Oct 2011 00:03:12 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=127145

Yahoo’s interim CEO Tim Morse penned another weekly email to staff at the Silicon Valley Internet giant today; the only one from the company’s leadership, which sent out two internal memos last week.

It’s below, and again addresses the swirl of news around Yahoo’s plans as part of its ongoing strategery over the company’s future.

“I know there was some more swirl out there this week,” wrote Morse. “You know we don’t comment on rumors or speculation and for now, everything has been just that — rumors.”

Well, not so much, which I will be weighing in on soon via an old-fangled thing called reporting, Tim!

Until then, here is the latest missive:

Short note from me today. Before we head into the weekend, I wanted to give a shout out to the Flickr team for their great work on their new mobile features. What they rolled out this week got rave reviews and tons of great buzz. We also had a nice Demos and Drinks event here in Sunnyvale that I was able to check out, so thanks to all the Yahoos involved in that.

Last but certainly not least, I want to say thank you to the teams that are working hard on Advertising Week. It kicks off on Monday, and we’ve got some big stuff in store, so stay tuned on that front.

I know there was some more swirl out there this week. You know we don’t comment on rumors or speculation and for now, everything has been just that — rumors.

Rest assured, when we have something to share, we will. In the meantime, please know how much the entire executive team appreciates your great work — and please keep it up!

Have a good weekend.

Tim

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110930/only-one-yahoo-fearless-leader-note-this-week-please-ignore-the-un-ignorable-rumors/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110923/yahoos-dueling-internal-memos-board-followed-by-ceo-spam-employees-in-race-to-explain/ http://allthingsd.com/20110923/yahoos-dueling-internal-memos-board-followed-by-ceo-spam-employees-in-race-to-explain/#comments Fri, 23 Sep 2011 23:17:28 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=124474

Today, Yahoo leaders — all of them in two different memos — took to the keyboards to fill their 14,000 employees in on what’s up.

Reading them, Yahoos must now be more confused than ever.

To summarize: Yahoo is for sale, sort of. But we’re taking it slow, because we always like to drag out the uncertainty here at Sunnyvale HQ. Hey, keep working hard and innovating, despite the still-matrixed system. But don’t fret that your job and career hang in the balance. And have a good weekend!

In the first email, Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock and co-founders David Filo and Jerry Yang — also a director — penned a rambling missive, which finally admitted the company was indeed, as was first reported here, for sale.

Yahoo said hired-gun investment advisor, Allen & Co., was “fielding inquiries from multiple parties that have already expressed interest in a number of potential options.”

Not to be a niggler, but didn’t Yang tell the troops at an all-hands meeting recently that Yahoo was not for sale?

Details! Thus, said the memo, until the company sorts out all the offers just pouring in — not so much, but when you’re selling a house, you put on the dog — Yahoos had to keep working hard.

Therefore: “What Yahoo! needs to do better — and we’ve talked about this — is accelerate innovation, reignite inspiration, and give our users what they want now — great content that is engaging and easy-to-use on any device and provides an experience in which they can participate and contribute. Perhaps most importantly, we need to anticipate what they will want next.”

You’ve. Talked. About. This. You mean to try to make cool stuff like every other tech company — Apple, Facebook, Google — already does? Mind-blowing.

After a little throat-clearing on its fake search for a new permanent CEO and some media-bashing (yes, this all my fault!), the memo noted that all this fancy strategery is going to take “months, not weeks.”

(Is it just me or does it feel as though former CEO Carol Bartz was fired a badillion years ago, instead of just weeks ago? Plus, I actually believe I officially now miss her kooky-but-genuine Friday staff emails.)

The Gang of Three email was followed by one from the incredible shrinking interim CEO Tim Morse, who said Yahoo was not in “limbo,” due to all this obvious limboness about the strategy.

“That means we will not be sitting still over the next few months,” Morse wrote. “We are actively making decisions and taking action.”

In other words, nothing to see here. Except everything.

Oh, I give up — just read for yourselves:

Dear Yahoos:

In our recent all hands meeting, we talked about the Board’s strategic review to help return the Company to a path of robust growth and industry-leading innovation. While our teams are working to evaluate the many opportunities by which Yahoo! can continue building on our success, all kinds of people have been — and will continue — speculating in the media about where that work is headed, so we thought it best to provide you with some additional context directly from those of us who are closest to it. We don’t have specific news to share with you today, but we are committed to communicating with you directly from time to time — especially given the level of external swirl — so that you know where we are in the process. You can expect periodic updates from us and we encourage you to communicate with us as well.

At the heart of what we are doing is our belief that Yahoo!’s core strengths are not only relevant to where users are going today, but can serve as a foundation for the next phase of our company’s growth. Consider our strengths: we have 680 million users worldwide. We have nine of the #1 properties in the U.S., and we are a leader in display advertising. Our brand is iconic — we are not the only ones who bleed purple. By whatever measure you want to use — engagement, quality of products and services, our value to our advertisers — we all feel that we have what it takes to succeed. Also, our Asia assets remain one of our top priorities and we continue to work well with the teams there. As you may have seen, Alibaba Group has just announced a liquidity event for its employees that reflects a continued appreciation in its value, and therefore of the value of our stake.

What Yahoo! needs to do better — and we’ve talked about this — is accelerate innovation, reignite inspiration, and give our users what they want now — great content that is engaging and easy-to-use on any device and provides an experience in which they can participate and contribute. Perhaps most importantly, we need to anticipate what they will want next. That is the path to enhancing the value of Yahoo! for all of its stakeholders, including its users, customers, shareholders, partners and Yahoos everywhere. Our strategic review is designed to help us map out the best way to achieve that.

At this point, we cannot offer many specifics about the Board’s review; we’ve just gotten started. You should know that the entire Board and management team are fully aligned and unanimous in their views regarding the scope of this work. Allen & Company was a logical choice to help us in this review, because they have been one of our advisers for some time, and this is familiar territory for them. Achieving success in our sector is intrinsic to what they do for a living, and they will be constructive partners.

Our advisers are working with us to develop ideas that we will pursue proactively. At the same time, they are fielding inquiries from multiple parties that have already expressed interest in a number of potential options. We will take the time we need to select and structure the best approach for the company, its shareholders and employees.

In addition, as we announced previously, the Board has commenced a search for a permanent Chief Executive Officer. That process also continues.

When we have updates that we can share we will do so. There will be plenty of rumors and speculation as different parties try to advance their agendas in the media — but it is important that we not be distracted by the rumors and speculation.

You are instrumental to the success of our business — we can’t do it without you. While we will move with a sense of urgency, this process will take time. Months, not weeks. We know that’s a lot of potential distraction, but we believe it will be worth the wait. We are forging a path to a next phase of growth for Yahoo! that feels like our best days: fun, full of possibility, and always in search of how to deliver the new thing people want from us. Together, we can write the next great chapter in the Yahoo! story and secure our place as one of those rarities: an internet company that endures.

Jerry
Roy
David

Yahoos,

I’m sure by now you’ve all seen the note from Jerry, David and Roy. I want you to know that while the Board works through all of our options, CEO Staff and I have been charged to move the company forward.

That means we will not be sitting still over the next few months. We are actively making decisions and taking action.

In fact, for three days this week, CEO staff and I met to do just that. Our planning for 2012 is well underway, and we continue to execute on our current plans — such as our Social Chrome announcement this week. (I want to make sure to give a big shout out to the team behind it; it’s getting some great press.)

You see, the Board is confident we can execute our current game plan in the short term. We’ve done some truly great work on updating the foundation of Yahoo!, and we’ve got some good things in the immediate pipeline. So, the Board’s focus is where it should be — on our long-term outlook, and how we best position ourselves to be successful in 3-5 years.

We need a flexible, visionary plan. That’s why the Board is actively looking at all the options available to put Yahoo! on a strong trajectory.

That being said, while the Board makes this decision, it does not mean we are in limbo. We have to keep Yahoo! moving ahead. And to do that, there are three things I need Yahoos everywhere to focus on:

1. Speed: Emphasize quick execution and decision-making

2. Accountability: Do what you say you’re going to do — and take ownership for time to market, monetization, user engagement, quality, or whatever metric defines success for your team

3. Purpose: Rally behind our mission and purpose: creating deeply personal digital experiences.

In the meantime, we will keep you updated as much as we can. And we will earn your trust — we know we have to.

Have a good weekend.

Tim

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110923/yahoos-dueling-internal-memos-board-followed-by-ceo-spam-employees-in-race-to-explain/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110906/exclusive-longtime-yahoo-front-page-editor-liz-lufkin-out/ http://allthingsd.com/20110906/exclusive-longtime-yahoo-front-page-editor-liz-lufkin-out/#comments Tue, 06 Sep 2011 15:37:53 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=117124

According to sources close to the situation, longtime Yahoo front page chief Liz Lufkin has parted ways with the company.

The departure last week appears to be related to a reorg by newish editor-in-chief Jai Singh, who used to run the editorial efforts for the Huffington Post, at the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

Singh appears to be setting up his own team and, thus, Lufkin was out.

Lufkin has been at Yahoo for many years, most recently as VP of front page programming. In that job, according to one bio, she supervised “editors in Sunnyvale, Santa Monica, New York and Dallas and consult[ed] to various international Yahoo! sites. Liz’s group contributed to the successful development of Yahoo’s pioneering content optimization personalization system, improving the relevancy of Front Page for users and providing new insights on audience behavior.”

Previous to Yahoo, she had been deputy managing editor at Gannett’s USATODAY.com and USA Today. She had a similar job at the Hearst-owned San Francisco Chronicle.

Lufkin’s job at Yahoo is a critical one, given how powerful the front page of the site is, with 600 million unique visitors and billions of page views.

While the portal system has been under siege in recent years, it is still a massive driver of traffic to Yahoo’s own Web properties and elsewhere on the Internet.

Yahoo declined to comment (but I am right!).

UPDATE: Yahoo said that it had hired CNET editor-in-chief Scott Ard to take Lufkin’s place. Ard, who worked for the CBS-owned tech news property for 12 years, will report directly to Jai Singh, editor-in-chief of the Yahoo Media Network.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110906/exclusive-longtime-yahoo-front-page-editor-liz-lufkin-out/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110830/java-icon-gosling-joins-sea-robot-start-up/ http://allthingsd.com/20110830/java-icon-gosling-joins-sea-robot-start-up/#comments Tue, 30 Aug 2011 23:53:54 +0000 Ben Worthen http://allthingsd.com/?p=115455 The father of the widely-used Java programming language is leaving Google for a startup that makes sea-faring robots.

James Gosling, the former Sun Microsystems engineer who went to Google after Sun was acquired by Oracle, has joined Liquid Robotics as chief software architect, he said Tuesday. The Sunnyvale, Calif., company–profiled in the Wall Street Journal earlier this year–makes “wave gliders” that ride ocean currents and collect and transmit data such as water temperature, wave heights, whale songs and chemical levels.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110830/java-icon-gosling-joins-sea-robot-start-up/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110727/juniper-plunges-on-outlook-fears/ http://allthingsd.com/20110727/juniper-plunges-on-outlook-fears/#comments Wed, 27 Jul 2011 21:50:36 +0000 Matt Jarzemsky http://allthingsd.com/?p=103439 Juniper Networks Inc. lost about a fifth of its market value Wednesday, a day after the networking company said economic concerns are pressuring business and government spending.

The comments from the Sunnyvale, Calif., company raised concern about second-half spending on networking products and weighed on the sector’s stocks Wednesday. Industry giant Cisco Systems Inc., which has talked about the economy’s “mixed signals” and air pockets for almost a year, fell 3.7 percent.

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