Actually the complete phrase was: “Do you even know who I am, f@#king idiot?. . .Google me, you dumb f@#k.”

In case the Las Vegas security guard for PURE nightclub didn’t know, he does now. Maybe he googled her and discovered she’s the daughter of the ex-CEO of Yahoo, Google’s biggest rival. Thing is, you know she’s said that at Thanksgiving just to annoy daddy.

Jaroslaw Jarczok, the security guard, filed a lawsuit against Semel, who’s been most famous for being one of the more recent humans to press herself against Tila Tequila in public, for allegedly “pummeling him in a drunken stupor.” This happened last August around 4 a.m., when she was arrested. On October 1st, the battery case was dismissed.

Jarczok, who at least sounds like a pretty big dude, is suing for unspecified damages, but according to the suit, Semel’s attack has made him “anxious about receiving harassing comments by friends.”

Look at this way, Jaroslaw, maybe she was just trying to toughen you up.
 

Nikki Finke reports, "I’ve heard that Semel is seriously kicking the tires at New Line and has already had a confab with Time Warner about it. . . .  As for MGM, you may remember that Semel was seriously thinking of heading that beleaguered studio back in 1995 when Ron Perelman was thinking of making a run at it."

It’s hard to know how to take this news; the entertainment industry isn’t something on which we’ve kept an especially close eye.  The idea of Semel’s involvement didn’t seem to disturb Finke, though, and she made clear that New Line’s founders deserve to get fired.  So that’s a decent start.

In other New Line- and MGM-related news, Guillermo del Toro is supposedly in talks to direct both "The Hobbit" films.  The release dates are a long ways off – 2010 and 2011 – but if they turn out either well or badly, it could have us forming a definite opinion on Semel’s involvement.

Her buy came a day after ex-CEO Terry Semel dumped thousands of Yahoo shares. Semel exercised options to buy 183,334 shares at $8.23 each, which he then sold for between $22.94 and $23.57 per share.

A Form 8-K filing with the SEC showed Decker purchased 47,000 shares of Yahoo, at prices between $23.40 and $23.68 per share, on August 7th and 8th.

It’s a rare vote of confidence for Yahoo from an insider. A Reuters report about Decker’s buy said it was just the fourth insider purchase in over four years, as well as the largest such buy in that time.

Mind you, this is largely speculation – there is no proof that heads will roll, and not even any really convincing evidence.  But CNET’s Stefanie Olsen and Dawn Kawamoto pose an interesting question: “will the board of directors that recently gave Semel a $71 million yearly compensation package answer for its mistakes as well?”

The idea certainly seems plausible.  Beyond that, it’s supported by several interviews Olsen and Kawamoto conducted with experienced businesspeople.

Marketing Pilgrim’s Andy Beal also seems to feel a changeup might be in order.  “If it’s going to happen, better sooner than later,” he writes.  “Changing the BOD now would be something the markets could accept and justify – based on the current makeover.  Waiting a few months would potentially send a wrong message to the market – that perhaps the current changes hadn’t worked and that Yahoo was still in trouble.”

Yet, as an article from our own David Utter proves, businesses can, and do, send very wrong messages.  And a post on the Tech Confidential Blog argues that many of Yahoo’s biggest investors may feel just fine about the way things are being run.  I’ll say this, though – as a small investor, I’m glad I don’t have any money tied up in Yahoo’s stock.

Yahoo: The Next Day

Whatever fruit the new advertising system at Yahoo will bear won’t be of any help to Semel’s approval among investors. His long-expected departure from the CEO position finally took place.

It means Yang will wear two hats, as CEO and CTO, though he says the CEO job is his. Yang took the CTO role after Farzad Nazem abruptly resigned. Nazem’s departure had been described as planned out in advance, yet Yahoo had no one in position to step into the job.

Decker’s continued move up the Yahoo leadership ladder persists in intriguing us. Yang isn’t going to do a couple of combined jobs forever. We’re inclined to believe Decker has a shot at Semel’s old office, and her close confidant Hilary Schneider will be nearby, perhaps taking Decker’s current president’s role.

Yahoo had begun consolidating some of its duplicate services in recent months. That strategy looks necessary, but may go on hold as Yahoo finds people to take the CEO and CTO roles over the coming months.

We’re not convinced Yang will keep the CEO job for long. It’s not a fun job right now, and Wall Street has much more interest in Decker.

"Yahoo! has an incredibly bright future and I make this move with deep conviction and enthusiasm," Yang said on Yahoo’s official blog. He will need that enthusiasm on July 17, when Yahoo reports its quarterly numbers, if Panama still hasn’t made a big impact on the bottom line.

The company says that since Semel resigned as CEO and will continue as non-executive chairman, there will be no separation agreement with him.

"The Board and I have long talked about the importance of ensuring a smooth succession in Yahoo!’s senior leadership — and more recently, about the need for a leadership team committed to carrying Yahoo! through its multi-year transformation," said Semel.

"As we discussed my future goals and plans, I was clear in telling the Board of my desire to take a step back sooner rather than later."
A third of the shareholders seem to think that was a good idea too.

Semel continues, "This is the time for new executive leadership, with different skills and strengths, to step in and drive the company to realize its full potential — it is the right thing to do, and the right time is now."

At a shareholders meeting last week, the crowd was somewhat hostile, with many refusing to vote for Semel’s reinstatement as CEO and questioning whether his $71 million pay package last year matched his performance.

It looks like that got to him – or to somebody – but not enough to fully oust Semel.

Yahoo says Decker will assume leadership of Yahoo’s business operations, which include the Advertiser and Publisher Group along with the Yahoo! Network, Connected Life, and our International operations. The Technology Group as well as all Corporate Functions will report to Yang.

And Terry, most of the time, will report home for a margarita by the pool. 

Yahoo’s pay compensation committee has been showering Semel with money, giving him at least anywhere from $1.08 billion to over $800 million in stock grants over the last six years. Last year, $107.5 million in stock grants was given to Semel in lieu of a $1 salary, a year in which Yahoo stock dropped about 35%. That means he was paid $107.5 million for erasing over $15 billion in shareholder value!

Why is he getting so much money? Google’s founders don’t receive any extra stock, and they are paid $1, so they are working purely to make the company more valuable. Meanwhile, Yahoo’s boss doesn’t have any incentive to make the company more valuable, because he gets paid $100 million a year no matter how bad a job he does. Why does he still have a job? Wouldn’t Yahoo gain so much with a lower-paid CEO that the firing of Semel alone would improve their earnings?

UPDATE: Yahoo shareholders voted significantly against the current slate of directors at the annual meeting, but not enough to get them removed. Hopefully it will send a message that enormous compensation without results is not acceptable.

Comments

The Hof (my apologies) also notes that when a proposal to match executive pay to executive performance was made, applause – widespread applause – was the result.

The only thing that miffs a shareholder more than a flat stock is a stock that is declining, and Yahoo has faced both undesirables all year. And mostly, they blame Semel.

While they also complain about Yahoo’s performance in relation to Google’s, this is a curmudgeonly fine line. Given that Yahoo owns 8.3 million shares of GOOG, what’s good for the Google is good for the Yahoo, too, with all of second place and a piece of first.

Media Post’s Tameka Kee describes a scene with similar hostility; one shareholder questioned the "fire in [Semel's] belly." Semel reaffirmed there was a fire still lit there, perhaps gaining strength from one raging at his backside.

Shareholder grumpiness is not unexpected; it’s been coming for months. Executives have been bailing faster than Paris from the Clink.

Though Yahoo in the past has acknowledged its relative comfort in second place (which, at the time, was a shocking acquiescence to Google’s supremacy after so many consecutive months of losing market share), and though Yahoo still dominates the rest (MSN/Live being the nearest competitor with less than half of Yahoo’s presence), that makes little difference to bottom-line-minded shareholders.

We’re just going to put three simple questions out there and see what our readers think of them; comments are welcome below. Please stay on topic, as the “delete as junk” function can be wielded by our admins with unbridled alacrity.

For the esteemed Terry Semel: Your compensation packages in recent years have rewarded you in a nearly inverse proportion to the results you have created in your job. How would you handle an employee whose highly-compensated position at Yahoo yielded far less productivity than one would expect of a staffer at a high pay scale?

It may seem like we’re picking on people here. Bad old negative media, no Coke Zero for you. But we’d actually like to know the answer to that question, as well as others.

We’ll be fair and bring the luckiest CEO in the world, Eric Schmidt, in for a shot as well. Google’s head geek impresses us as being wise enough to keep his hands off the icky code stuff for which they employ smart people to handle.

Google wants a boost in the H-1B cap so they can hire more foreign-born workers, ones whom they believe are highly qualified to work for the search advertising company.

Mr. Schmidt, why do your engineering positions only require a minimum of a B.S. or equivalent experience in computer science, when a much more educated and/or experienced worker may better fit the definition of a “highly qualified” job candidate? Why not a minimum of M.S. or equivalent experience instead?

WebProNews staffers like our fear-inducing managing editor Mike McDonald just returned from Danny Sullivan’s inaugural SMX Advanced conference in Seattle. We have videos and articles from the well-conducted show.

Mr. Sullivan, if you were still in your capacity of Search Engine Strategies host and organizer, would you have attempted to hold a session and ban people from blogging or otherwise covering its contents?

We were surprised to learn the month-long embargo regarding the “Give It Up” session that you agreed to came after much debate. So what’s the story here?

Why Have The Yahoos Departed?

The management tree at Yahoo has been pruning itself over the past year. These past four weeks have seen Dan Finnegan, Pamela Thompson Johnston, and company CTO Farzad Nazem announce they will turn in their office keys and head for the exits.

Valleywag posted a helpful chart of the Yahoo management team, with eight ex-executives marked off the list. Those don’t include Johnston, who was a regional VP for emerging markets at Yahoo.

A couple of execs moved on after last year’s big reorganization, which divvied Yahoo’s structure into three core verticals under CEO Terry Semel. Two of the three verticals are presently leaderless. Though Nazem disclosed his departure was a long-planned retirement, Yahoo did not have a candidate ready to step in via promotion or hire to take that position. Co-founder Jerry Yang will fill in as an interim leader instead.

Lars Rabbe’s departure for a position at Intuit didn’t receive much notice until Valleywag pointed out how Yahoo’s chief information officer had moved on to the accounting software firm.

“It’s not as though all these losses were tragic, but 30% turnover at the executive level is extraordinarily high: and Yahoo’s struggling to find replacements,” said the Wag.

Some aspects of the turnover look like power struggles taking place. Finnegan left after executive VP Susan Decker placed her close associate Hilary Schneider in the slot as his boss.

Unless Yahoo’s new ad system, Panama, has some fantastic numbers ready for Yahoo’s next quarterly earnings announcement, we would be surprised if Yahoo’s institutional investors don’t ask why Semel isn’t among those heading out the door.