Sunnyvale, California — Internet pioneer Yahoo Inc.’s Vice President of Search Consumer Products “Larry Cornett,” who was vital to the company’s message that it remained dedicated to the search business even though it was outsourcing the back-end search crawling to Microsoft since the past several months, is leaving the company.
Cornett has worked for four years for the Sunnyvale, Calif. company, and his departure from Yahoo was announced on his personal blog at the weekend, and was first reported by Search Engine Land.
Larry Cornett, formerly vice president of consumer products for Yahoo Search (Credit: Cornett Experience)
Cornett had been a very vocal defender of Yahoo’s search strategy, frequently demonstrating new features to reporters and alleviating analyst concerns. At a media conference last year, he was asked, “What happens if you guys get fired, laid off, go to Google or whatever else?” — a question which he politely brushed off, saying “search is a critical business for Yahoo.”
News of Cornetts’ exiting probably is not a coincidence, which comes almost two weeks after Yahoo handing over pink-slip to a portion of its search team, likely as a result of the Bing/Yahoo search deal. At the time, Yahoo declined to give any numbers on the number of people who were axed, but they did give us this statement:
“Yahoo! remains engrossed on innovating the overall Search experience over the long-term, and the Yahoo! Search group is toiling on some new experiences that we believe will convert Yahoo! users to Yahoo! searchers. To accomplish our new product objectives, we have decided that we need a different combination of talent and are making changes within the search group in order to more deeply invest in other areas of the group.”
Yahoo has attempted to boost its slumping search market share by emphasizing the work it has done in improving the presentation of search results, an effort in which Cornett often served as lead spokesman. The company has stabilized its share in recent months, but only after resorting to gimmicks such as turning news photo galleries into “search” queries.
In a blog post, Cornett does not describe what is it that has driven his departure, only saying that “the time has come to move on to other opportunities.” He says he is starting a new, stealth company, as well as a consulting practice.
Cornett also took the opportunity to recap some of the things Yahoo’s Search team did in the last few years. From his blog:
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Relaunching Yahoo! Search in Oct 2007 with industry-leading Search Assist features
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Bringing structured data into Web Search for the first time with Y! SearchMonkey
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Opening up Search technology to the world like never before with the Yahoo! Search BOSS platform
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Bringing true applications to Search with Search Pad
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Launching an entirely new Y! Search experience again in Sep 2009
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Creating incredibly engaging Image and Video Search experiences
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Integrating Twitter and real-time content in Nov 2009
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An addictive entertainment Search experience that launched this March
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And finally, the truly fun Yahoo! Sketch-a-Search app on the iPhone
While Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz persistently emphasizes that the company is committed to search in that respect — search results as a user-experience design problem — that is exactly the kind of background Cornett possessed, having led software design teams at eBay and Apple, among other stops, according to his LinkedIn profile.