Sunnyvale, California — Yahoo Inc.’s chief of communications Brad Williams, has left the company, according to reports appeared at the weekend on The Wall Street Journal, quoting sources familiar with the issue. The development is the latest in management reorganization orchestrated by Yahoo’s new CEO Carol Bartz.
Yahoo’s hard-liner chief executive Bartz had reportedly decided to eliminate Williams’ position in recent days, according to the newspaper, which cited people briefed on the move. The report credited one of those sources with saying that Williams had been laid off.
Williams, who joined the company in 2008, had been serving the Sunnyvale, Calif., company as senior communications executive since the departure of Jill Nash earlier this year, was notified of Bartz’s decision. He was previously a spokesman for eBay Inc.
The move comes barely days after Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, California, posted a sharp drop in earnings and said it would eliminate 5% of its workforce, or nearly 700 positions, as it copes with a downturn in the online-advertising market and competition from Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.
The move is the latest revamping initiatives under new CEO Carol Bartz, who has sworn to streamline Yahoo’s operations.
A Yahoo spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.
The job cuts are the latest in a string of reductions at Yahoo after it cut about 1,600 positions in the fourth quarter. In February, Yahoo said its chief financial officer, Blake Jorgensen, would be leaving the company as part of a broad management restructuring.
Also earlier this year, after Williams boss, Jill Nash, departed the company, Williams was put in charge of all of communications at Yahoo. His role has been on rocky ground since Bartz came on board in January and started wielding control over communications and other management functions. She indicated her desire to restructure the communications department under a new chief marketing officer and hired Elisa Steele, formerly an executive at NetApp, to fill the role in March.
The Web portal is also moving to trim costs by shutting down under-performing products and services. Yahoo said earlier this week it would shut down GeoCities, a free personal Web-hosting service it bought in 1999 for about $3 billion.