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Never mind that, at their closest tips, Canada and Europe are over 1,500 miles apart; in Yahoo’s mind, they’re pretty much one and the same.

Yahoo exec Toby Coppel writes, “As we look to our strategic needs and our vision to power Yahoo! for the future we have decided to move Yahoo! Canada into the European organization.”  Feeling flabbergasted?  My first thought took me to the National Geographic survey in which American students couldn’t find their own backyard.

Valleywag’s Megan McCarthy picked up on another aspect of the development, however, and states, “Feeling his position threatened after career patron Terry Semel stepped down as Yahoo’s CEO, and having been unceremoniously booted off Yahoo’s ‘Management Team’ page, Coppel is now begging for scraps of authority.”

Sure, this sounds harsh, but that’s why we love Valleywag.  And after looking over Coppel’s memo (“So with immediate effect Kerry Munro, Canada GM will report into me”), I’m inclined to agree with McCarthy.

Coppel had his own reasons for lumping Canada in with Europe, however.  “Canada’s multicultural diversity parallels Europe . . .  Canada enjoys a comparable size of operation to that of the European countries and it has many of the same opportunities and challenges . . .  From a product/engineering standpoint Canada has ongoing collaboration with the EU team . . .  Like Europe - Canada has been leading international development of properties such as Lifestyle, video, UGC and platforms like mediasuite.”

Right.  Well, best wishes to any geography teachers who have to explain this decision.