Yahoo’s embattled CEO Scott Thompson (pictured here) is set to step down from his job at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, in what will be dramatic end to a controversy over a fake computer science degree that he had on his bio, according to multiple sources close to the situation. The company will apparently say he is leaving for “personal reasons.” But the evolving crisis — which is just over a week old — centered on his botched resume and how he handled the thorny issue is clearly the key reason for the abrupt leaving. Thompson’s likely replacement on an interim basis will be Yahoo’s global media head Ross Levinsohn , who most recently also ran its Americas unit, including its advertising sales. In addition to the management upheaval, Yahoo’s board is closing in on a settlement with the man who discovered Thompson’s misstep, activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point, said sources. The situation could change, since Yahoo’s full board still has to meet this morning to officially approve the sweeping changes at the long-troubled company. But, if it is, this development goes a long way toward fixing some of what has been ailing Yahoo recently. And it’s also a stunning victory for Loeb, since the pugnacious hedge fund investor is set to get three board seats from a slate proposed by him as part of a proxy fight aimed at Yahoo. The new Yahoo directors will be media exec Michael Wolf and turnaround specialist Harry Wilson. Loeb’s fourth selection — former NBC head Jeff Zucker — will withdraw. The five current Yahoo directors — who were to step down at the company’s annual meeting this summer — will leave the board effective immediately, sources said, to make way for the Third Point selections. Finally, Yahoo’s recently added director Fred Amoroso will be named chairman of the board. Amoroso is the director who has been conducting the investigation into the issues raised by Loeb about how the fake academic credentials got in Thompson’s public bios, as well as in Yahoo’s regulatory filings, and also the hurried circumstances around his hiring in January. Those mysteries — read, screw-ups — might never be solved now, although Thompson made a convoluted attempt to explain it all in two awkward employee meetings at the end of last week, in which he blamed a headhunting firm for introducing the mistake when he was being hired for a job at eBay in the mid-2000 timeframe. That company, Heidrick and Struggles, slapped back with an internal memo noting that Thompson’s claim was not “verifiably not true.” Sources said that Heidrick told Yahoo’s board that it was in possession of a resume submitted by Thompson that he had apparently submitted showing the inaccurate CS degree on it
Read MoreFirst promised well over a year ago, the LTE version of Research In Motion’s PlayBook has, like so many of the company’s products, been delayed to the point of disinterest. But the device is still top of mind at RIM and is evidently headed down the company’s product pipeline. During a media briefing at BlackBerry World this week, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins told attendees to expect a 4G LTE-enabled PlayBook “ later this year. ” He provided no details beyond that, revealing nothing about potential carriers, specs or pricing. So for now, we have only RIM’s word that the device is coming relatively soon. Which is encouraging and somewhat dubious at the same time. Remember, RIM first announced plans to release a 4G version of the PlayBook in January of 2011, promising to deliver it that summer. In June, former RIM President and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis reiterated that plan but pushed the launch date ahead to the fall. “We are now on a steady cadence of features and applications releases using our industry leading automatic wireless software update for PlayBook, including Facebook and video conferencing,” he said . “We are soon to release native email and BBM in our Android player later in the summer. To be followed in the fall with 4G PlayBooks for WiMAX, LTE and HSPA+.” But that never happened. Sprint scrapped its WiMax PlayBook plan in August . And a promised LTE version of the device didn’t debut that fall and hasn’t shown up since. Of course, 2011 was a rocky year for RIM and the company had more important things to worry about than the LTE PlayBook — like taking a $485 million writedown for discounting the first version of the device . Perhaps now with its new leadership in place and BlackBerry 10 presumably on track for launch late this year, RIM finally has the focus and chops to deliver the device during the window Heins has promised.
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NEW YORK — It’s on. Independent groups favoring Mitt Romney already are launching TV advertisements in competitive states for the November general election, providing political cover against President Barack Obama’s well-financed campaign while the Republican candidate works to rebound from a bruising and expensive nomination fight. Some conservative organizations also are planning big get-out-the-vote efforts, and Romney backers are courting wealthy patrons of his former GOP rivals. Taken together, the developments underscore how dramatically the political landscape has changed since a trio of federal court cases — most notably the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling — paved the way for a flood
Read MoreHarvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology today are launching a non-profit, open-sourced joint online learning venture called EdX , with the first courses to start in the fall of this year. Basically, Harvard is jumping in as an equal partner to a previously announced project called MITx , with each school putting up $30 million in funding and contributing faculty leaders. EdX will offer Harvard and MIT classes online for free, with other schools invited to join in the future. The two Boston area schools are essentially leapfrogging Stanford University, where a set of online classes last year gave rise to the creation of two for-profit companies led by the Stanford professors who taught the classes — Sebastian Thrun’s Udacity and Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng’s Coursera . Stanford is still figuring out its own approach to online learning . EdX will bring MIT and Harvard courses to students around the world with no admissions requirements, free classes and “a modest fee” for credentials earned by students, according to plans posted today . The open-source platform will include “self-paced learning, online discussion groups, wiki-based collaborative learning, assessment of learning as a student progresses through a course, and online laboratories.” “Online education is not an enemy of residential education, but rather a profoundly liberating and expanding ally,” said MIT President Susan Hockfield at a press conference this morning.
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It is fascinating to watch the manner in which social media are affecting the political landscape. They are causing a gradual transformation in how we perceive -- and ultimately elect -- our candidates for public office. Several weeks ago, when Rick Santorum was in the race for the Republican nomination, he trended as the most talked-about candidate on Twitter. Unfortunately for him, those tweets were negative in context. In contrast, Mitt Romney seemed to receive the most positive mentions. Now that every other Republican presidential candidate has dropped out of the race, he is trending even more positively. No surprise there
Read MoreThe Federal Communications Commission will soon be at full strength with five commissioners, now that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) agreed to lift the hold he put on the two nominees President Obama named last November. The soonest the Senate could vote on Republican Ajit Pai and Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel would be May 7, when the chamber returns from a brief recess. From the moment the two were nominated , they were caught in the middle of a beef Grassley has had with the FCC over the way the agency handled LightSquared's requests to build out a wireless network. After much posturing, Grassley has finally has begun to get the documents he wants to investigate the matter and on Friday issued a statement saying he would lift his hold.
Read MoreBig Fish Games founder Paul Thelen will again become CEO after handing over the job to Jeremy Lewis four years ago. The shake-up comes as a surprise as the Seattle-based casual games leader was expected to file for an IPO early this year. In a release , the company confirmed Lewis would step down as CEO effective April 30, but continue as a director. Thelen, who had been serving as chief strategy officer as well as chairman of the board, will assume the roles of president and CEO. In a memo obtained by AllThingsD , Lewis wrote to employees: “This is a natural point in our company’s progression for me to pass my responsibilities as president and CEO back to Paul, who will bring his characteristic entrepreneurial drive and creativity to the forefront.” While it is not common for founders to take back control of mature companies, it does happen on rare occasions. Some prominent examples include Apple’s Steve Jobs and Starbucks’ Howard Schultz. In October, the company wrote hefty dividend checks to its shareholders and nearly all of its employees, some of whom received as much as $100,000, depending on their tenure. The act was considered a sign that the company was preparing to go public. In 2011, the company said sales totaled $180 million, up 30 percent from the year-ago period. Big Fish Games is known for developing and publishing casual game titles, which are distributed through its Web site as consumer downloads, but increasingly on the iPad.
Read MoreHoping to light a fire under the Federal Communications Commission, Bloomberg said Tuesday it filed new evidence that Comcast continues to violate the news neighborhooding condition required by the FCC in Comcast's merger with NBCUniversal. The neighborhooding and other conditions placed on the merger were intended to prevent Comcast from favoring NBC's and its own programming over others. Responding to Comcast's annual report of compliance, Bloomberg submitted what it says is new evidence that Comcast continues to thumb its nose at the condition requiring it to place Bloomberg TV in the same news neighborhood with other news channels, especially Comcast-owned CNBC and MSNBC. Bloomberg presented four new examples in small markets where since its merger with NBCU, Comcast created or changed two news neighborhoods and where Bloomberg TV is, on average, 100 channels away from Comcast-owned channels such as CNBC and MSNBC. "We would need a passport to get into the news neighborhoods," said Greg Babayak, Bloomberg's head of government affairs, during a press conference. "Challenging CNBC, the dominant player, is a daunting task, but not having equitable channel placement—that's an enormous hill that is placed in our way." Bloomberg's original complaint against Comcast was filed in June. Since then, the two companies have argued over the meaning of the FCC's condition: "If Comcast now or in the future carries news and/or business news channels in a neighborhood, defined as placing a significant number or percentage of news and/or business channels substantially adjacent to one another in a system's channel lineup, Comcast must carry all independent news and business news channels in that neighborhood." The FCC, which has yet to act on Bloomberg's complaint, took almost as much of a beating as Comcast during a press call this afternoon.
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