Matt Cutts of Google has blogged that Google is willing to hire Yahoo Search engineers. Matt said, “if you’re an excellent Yahoo engineer with solid experience in search, Google is hiring.”

Clearly, since the Microsoft & Yahoo deal, engineers at Yahoo might be a bit concerned about their job stability. Ask.com ran a funny poaching campaign recently to pick up Yahoo engineers. Microsoft said many Yahoo engineers will move over to Microsoft if the deal is approved. And now Google is hiring Yahoo engineers.

So if you are a Yahoo engineer and you want to apply for a job at Google, use this page to get started.

Investor and Yahoo board member Carl Icahn has reportedly reduced his holdings in Yahoo by roughly 12 million shares, according to a recent regulatory filing with the US SEC. Icahn became a board member last year after a prolonged and very public episode that involved heavy criticism of then Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and an attempt to oust the existing Yahoo board, including Yang, for blocking Microsoft’s earlier takeover attempt.

As a board member he obviously supported the new MicroHoo search deal, which has so far turned out to be a disappointment to most investors. It also appears to have created similar disappointment and a new round of internal frustration and  distraction among some Yahoo employees and engineers. According to AllThingsD:

One in a series of weekly Friday communications from [Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz], some of which I have posted before, this [memo] got a lot of attention internally, especially among the down-in-the-dumps engineering staff, who were less than pleased with the damn-the-torpedoes-stop-yer-whining tone of the memo.

Whatever the reaction, it is certainly a classic Bartz times 10–a definite back of the hand for those Yahoos who perhaps dwelled too much on whether or not they liked the recent search deal she struck with Microsoft (MSFT).

Here’s the basic gist of it: Fie on naysayers, stop bellyaching, Yahoo rocks and get back to work!

The internal Bartz memo referred to above expresses impatience with implied employee frustration in the wake of the MicroHoo search deal:

So get out of the sugar low–we have work to do. Stop staring at our navels, stop arguing with each other. Stop debate, debate, debate, and let’s focus on the competition.

As Bartz says in her memo, the MicroHoo deal is done (though it still must pass regulatory muster) and now she’s trying to refocus employees outwardly to regain momentum. (It seems Yahoo has been burdened with one internal controversy and distraction after another for at least two years.)

Bartz is trying to move on but the controversy may linger for some time as the deal is implemented.

Doug Cutting, creator of the Hadoop technology that powered Yahoo’s search index, is leaving the company at the end of August for a position at Cloudera.

While the immediate reaction is to assume this is related to the Yahoo-Microsoft deal, in which Microsoft would take over Yahoo’s search engine, Cutting tells the New York Times that’s not the case.

“This has been in the works for awhile and is unrelated,” Mr. Cutting said. “I am definitely not leaving in any sort of protest, and the thing I like least about this move is that it might be perceived that way.”

On his personal blog, Cutting says he’ll be doing much the same work with Cloudera that he was doing at Yahoo, and will continue working with Yahoo developers.

Hadoop is open-source software that allows large-scale data mining and analysis — the kind of stuff you’d need to build a high-level search engine that spans the always-expanding web. Greg Sterling went into more detail about Hadoop earlier this year.

On Twitter today, Yahoo thanked Cutting “for all the great work you did” at Yahoo.

During the Yahoo-Microsoft conference call with CEOs Bartz and Ballmer and subsequent discussion with Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi and Yahoo’s Hilary Schneider we heard repeatedly that although the two engines would share a single index and Microsoft would incorporate elements of Yahoo Search (e.g., Search Monkey) into Bing, Yahoo would continue to be different and vital in search.

Freed from the cost ($425 million reportedly) and ongoing demands of the back end, it would “innovate” around the interface and search user experience.

Many people in the industry were skeptical and  shrugged it off as something akin to wishful thinking or putting a brave face on Yahoo’s exit from the search business. (Danny wrote “A Search Eulogy for Yahoo” thereafter.) But Prabhakar Raghavan, in charge of Yahoo Labs, discussed on Friday, how the company might incorporate Twitter and real-time search into Yahoo results. He again made the case that Yahoo would continue to innovate and present a compelling search user experience.

“In terms of satisfying user intent, the hard work and in some sense the bigger growth opportunities for differentiation are not the back-end of crawling and indexing, but really surfacing and assembling content the right way to satisfy user intent,” he said.

Real Time search is an increasingly popular online activity where Yahoo’s approach to search could provide a compelling user experience, Raghavan said.

It’s theoretically possible but one of the practical challenges will be recruiting and retaining top search talent, as the NY Times points out:

Yahoo will lose some of its most talented engineers to Microsoft and as many as 400 employees through layoffs. The deal also undercuts years of investment around search technology. By selling the technological crown jewels, the company may lose some of its high-tech credibility among employees and others in Silicon Valley, as well as among customers.

Investors, who had been expected to cheer the deal, punished Yahoo for the terms of the transaction. On Thursday, the day the deal was announced, Yahoo’s stock declined roughly 12 percent — although it has largely recovered since then. Financial analysts and investors saw the deal terms as something of a fire sale. According to the Times article:

Microsoft offered $46 billion to buy all of Yahoo. Analysts estimate that the new deal — involving what many people saw as Yahoo’s most important asset — is worth only around $4 billion to $5 billion.

The deal was largely motivated by Ballmer’s persistence and Yahoo’s inability to compete with Google and Microsoft in search at the required levels of investment. There was also lots of additional pressure coming from the market. All of these things, among a couple of others, perhaps made the deal inevitable.

The deal isn’t done until regulators in the US and EU approve it. That process is not, as they say, a “slam dunk.” But let’s assume that it does go through. Yahoo can’t simply ignore search. It will still be forced by the market to pay attention to search volumes and monetization (RPS).

To that end, Yahoo will in fact need to invest in the user experience to maintain its position. If it doesn’t it will lose share to Google or Bing. If that starts happening Bartz and Yahoo will be under intense pressure. So the notion of “innovating around the user experience” isn’t simply an aspiration for Yahoo, it’s a necessity.

These days it’s hard to remember that at one time Yahoo was the pioneer in dynamic mapping. It introduced enhanced local search features and capabilities into the map before Google, Microsoft and MapQuest. At a certain point, however, Yahoo opted out of the map feature wars that erupted between Google and Microsoft (StreetView, 3D, aerial, UGC). Since that time there have been a range of incremental improvements for Yahoo Maps.

Accordingly the company said that it has given Yahoo Maps a “face lift” in the UK, and in France. There are a range of improvements discussed. While these ongoing improvements are critical and help boost quality, the larger question in my mind is how committed is Yahoo to its mapping product and to Yahoo Local more broadly?

While Yahoo Maps remains a solid product, absent ongoing effort and investment, it will continue to lose share and fade. MapQuest’s complacency until recently is one of the factors that allowed Google to overtake it. The chart below shows a relatively stable market share for Yahoo Maps, albeit one that is on a gradual downward trend.

Source: Compete

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has said that the company is increasingly focused on local. Indeed, Yahoo Local was similarly a market-leading product that has lost some luster and traction, amid the many reorgs, and now seems to be in maintenance mode. Given Yahoo’s focus on Mobile and its parallel effort to move from a “web of pages to a web of objects” in search, the company should see its local and mapping assets as strategic in that broader context.

I agree with Bartz that it’s critical for Yahoo to get its managerial house in order. But now, as that objective seems to be nearing an end, the company should refocus on its products. And with Bing seeming to gain some momentum, Yahoo cannot take user loyalty for granted.

Yahoo has announced the hiring of Tim Morse as Chief Financial Officer. He’ll report directly to CEO Carol Bartz. Morse most recently was CFO at Altera, and before that served as CFO for General Electric Plastics.

According to Yahoo’s SEC filing, Morse gets a base salary of $500,000, a signing bonus of $500,000, and has a “target bonus” of another $500,000.

Morse will officially join Yahoo on June 17, and take over the CFO position on July 1.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has been talking a lot over the past two weeks about Yahoo and how it competes against Google and Microsoft. Each time she does, I feel like she’s digging the hole even deeper for Yahoo’s prospects in search. Rather than communicate a clear search strategy — which you’d better have if you’re in a war against Google and Microsoft — she resonates mixed messages that Yahoo can ill afford to send.

Yahoo’s Not A Search Engine

Let’s go back to the end of May, when at the D conference, I was less than enamored with her comments. As I wrote earlier:

Yang got reamed for a poor definition of what Yahoo was at D last year, but Bartz’s definition this year didn’t sound that great:

We’re the place where people find relevant contextual information about things they care about.

Relevant contextual? Huh? Buzzword buzzword. Things I care about? Like is my email relevant contextual information? Or is that my IM? And where’s search in all this, Yahoo’s second largest revenue source last quarter?

Well, Bartz did name search as one of Yahoo’s most important products. But then in how her company is positioned against Google, we get this summary:

Google’s a fierce competitor. They’re very good in search, very good in maps. But they don’t have the positioning and reach that we have. We are totally different companies. How we got drafted behind Google, I’m not sure. We are a place people come to be informed. Google is a place people go to do search….We want to be more personal than Google. We are about providing a more integrated experience. We are a different company than Google. Kara jumps in to ask if that means Bartz isn’t committed to holding on to the company’s 20 percent share of the search market. Bartz says it does not.

How Yahoo got drafted behind Google? How on earth did Yahoo get drafted behind Microsoft, is the question. We know how Google beat Yahoo in search — it provided a better service for longer and took people away.

Yahoo wants to be more personal than Google? Because why? Because if Google’s just a place people go to search, what’s so personal to beat? Except, of course, things like Google’s personalized web search results, which improve relevancy for some users. Or personalized news. Or personalized home pages that don’t interfere with search unless you want them to.

If search is an important product for Yahoo — if Bartz wants to maintain the 20 percent share she has and grow it — then you damn well get the word “search” out there about yourself in any comparison to Google. “Integrated experience with search,” or “…come to be informed and search” or whatever. And you especially do that when you keep losing top search talent to Google, Microsoft or elsewhere.

Because Not Being A Search Engine In 2004 Worked So Well

As you can see (or for those who just don’t read previous quotes), I felt like Bartz was backing away from Yahoo as a search engine. And a few hours later, I updated my story to add more annoyance over this:

Bartz again is talking on how Yahoo “is not a search company,” and I remembered now another reason why this is annoying me so much. Because I’ve heard it before from Yahoo, back in 2004, when Yahoo was positioned as “life engine” (better than a Bing decision engine, I guess) and “more than a search engine.”

I wrote at the time how disappointing the move was, in a piece called “Return To The Sad Days Of More Than A Search Engine?,” where I wrote in part:

“More than a search engine.” It’s almost unbelievable to hear those words spoken, especially from Yahoo, which over the past year has been desperately trying to resurrect its image as a search engine. While I’ve yet to hear Google utter those exact words, its actions speak them loudly.

I’ve generally seen it unlikely that we’ll get a “new” Google in the near future, because it hasn’t seemed like the major players (Google included) would make portal mistakes again and neglect search. But the events of the past few weeks make me wonder anew.

Maybe the established companies will be able to juggle all the balls in the air — portal features, search, media sales — without dropping any of them. If not, perhaps the circle is about to turn again and a new Google really will emerge.

Since 2004, being “more than a search engine” covers an era where Yahoo’s search share plunged. I still think it’s a terrible signal to send. There’s a difference between “more than search” versus “search and more.” Be the “search and more” company, Yahoo, if you want to still be taken seriously in search.

I bolded the key point. Is Yahoo “more than search” or “search and more?” It makes a difference, especially when there’s a new competitor being heavily positioned against Google — Microsoft’s Bing.

Geez, it’s like Bartz handed a gift to Microsoft. Here Microsoft wants to build awareness that there’s an alternative to Google, and Bartz effectively tells people that Yahoo’s out of the game. It was somewhat similar to how Ask screwed up last year (see Obit: A West Coast Digerati Deadpools Ask.com) and now still struggles to be counted among the major search engines. Who thought Yahoo would shoot itself the same way?

We’re For Sale, No We’re Not; Maybe We Are, Maybe We Aren’t

Remember, we’ve also got Bartz that same week telling us how for the right price, Microsoft could buy Yahoo. Not just search but the entire thing (with no qualification about anti-trust concerns). Quoting again from my previous story:

At the end of last year, former CEO Jerry Yang got ridiculed for suggesting that Microsoft should still seek a deal at the right price. But yesterday, I saw plenty of praise for Bartz basically saying the same thing:

“If there’s boatloads of money and the right technology involved, would we do a deal? Sure,” says Bartz. “It’s that simple. Not like a big secret what happens when you do a deal. It’s realism. Would sell for the right money, the right data and technology. So Yahoo is willing to sell search if the money is right and the technology is there? Bartz: “Yes.” What about the whole company? “They’d have to have biiiiig boatloads of money, though.” Are talks between the two companies still going on? Bartz says: a little bit.

Clearly Yang should have said “boatloads,” in order to escape scorn. Meanwhile, Yahoo’s search future effectively remains in limbo. I appreciate the honesty in saying that for enough money, Yahoo would have to consider any deal. But that’s removed from the actual context — which is constant reports that the companies are actively talking more than a little bit.

As long as this uncertainly hangs out there, uncertainty hangs over Yahoo Search in general. For example, do you develop for things like SearchMonkey if you’re not sure the program will be supported if Yahoo Search goes to Microsoft?

And sell the entire company? Good luck. Seriously, good luck even trying. After Microsoft led an anti-trust campaign to quash a proposed Google-Yahoo partnership (not even an acquisition), you can expect Google return the favor complaining that a sale of Yahoo would give Microsoft too much share of the email space, or the IM market, or the portal/start page space or you name it.

Realistically, Yahoo’s likely to sell its search assets to Microsoft and retain the rights to the search data stream, to help with display ad targeting and a myriad of other uses. But search is a crown jewel. Sell it, and Yahoo potentially becomes another AOL — one fighting against ironically Microsoft, which is still going to continue pushing a portal of its own.

A week later, when Bing’s getting buzz, Bartz tried to downplay it. Bing wasn’t “interesting,” wouldn’t take long-term share away from Yahoo and Microsoft should just focus on desktop apps. Oh, and there’s no need to do a Microsoft deal, as Reuters summarized:

“Yahoo doesn’t have to do anything with Microsoft about anything,” Bartz said at an investor conference.

“We are a damned big, important site,” she added later speaking at the Bank of America U.S. Technology conference.

I half expected her to say that Yahoo also wears big boy pants now, too. It just sounds so weak. And confusing. And loaded with qualifications of what anti-trust laws would allow to be sold:

When asked if it makes more sense for Yahoo to buy Microsoft’s Internet properties, Bartz said “I actually mentioned that.” But the Justice Department wouldn’t approve a deal where Yahoo acquired properties like Hotmail, she said. “It’s a great idea, but I don’t think it would work.”

Likewise, a full-blown Yahoo-Microsoft merger also would never get past the Department of Justice.

In fact, she said, the whole Microsoft-Yahoo fascination is overdone. “I personally think we would be better off if we never heard the word Microsoft.”

Well then stop talking about them! Don’t say one week that you’d sell Microsoft your entire company, then the next week complain people are asking about it. And certainly don’t say you’d sell everything one week and the next say you couldn’t sell legally if you wanted to. It makes things at the top sound even more confused.

Bartz Keeps Gifting Microsoft

And now we have yet another confusing interview. Via PaidConent, Bartz spoke to Fox News:

Selected quotes from Bartz (indented) and thoughts from me.

We can take on Microsoft and Google. We have our own story … we’re much broader than just search.

OK, Google’s top story is that it’s a great search engine. Your story is that you’re a portal. So I guess your story to consumers is that if they want to search, go to Google. And that’s not taking on Google.

Meanwhile, Bartz extends the myth by implication that Google isn’t more than search. As if it doesn’t offer email, or IM, or news information, or finance information — you name it. Perhaps some people will buy that. I don’t think savvy people will.

Later, the interviewer says, “I’m sorry, don’t kill me, I go to Google for search at this point. How are you going to get someone like me away.”

Listen, Google has the search brand, there’s no doubt about it …. [Yahoo Search] is really designed for people that are on our sites and find something interesting, they want to look farther and they go to Yahoo Search. Twenty percent is a meaningful share. And we’re very happy to have that, and we think we have the technology to keep it.

Yes, 20 percent is meaningful. But wow, it sounds like the goal is to maintain that share, not grow it. I mean, Bartz is talking “keep” not “expand.” And that’s not surprising, if Yahoo Search is now something designed only for those already at Yahoo.

Seriously, how demoralizing for those remaining in Yahoo Search to hear from the top that they’re not competing to pull people away from Google. That Yahoo’s search product isn’t attractive enough to woe people to Yahoo. Instead, it’s just something that gets used when they’re already at Yahoo to play games, check their stocks, see news or some other products that I gather Bartz thinks are more compelling.

Amazing. And meanwhile, we see Bartz react to report Microsoft’s Bing beat Yahoo for a day in traffic. Rather than poke at the stats, which were questionable in many way, she tosses out another statement that comes across as either not knowledgeable or purposely misleading.

They didn’t beat us by much. It was one day. I think it’s gosh, maybe in Omaha some place, some small area.

It was a globalwide stat, actually. And Bing didn’t beat Yahoo at all, by some measures — but I’m sure Microsoft is glad to have the CEO of Yahoo admitting that they did.

And when asked if Bartz was worried about Microsoft getting a toehold:

We don’t want anybody getting a toehold. We want to have the best entertainment, the best content …. how do you actually manage your life and how do you actually go and find out what’s most important to you …. we have a much bigger job than this narrow area of search.

Yes, blah, blah, blah with the Life Engine stuff. We got it. You’re not a search engine. And search, which is widely seen as one of the biggest jobs on the internet, is just some narrow niche thing that Yahoo’s Bartz doesn’t seem that bothered about dominating in.

Good thing that the Department Of Justice blocked a Google-Yahoo deal on ads to ensure we had strong competition in the search space. Too bad that doesn’t seem to have caused Yahoo itself to get competitive.

Yahoo has reportedly hired Eric Brown as head of communications for the company according to the Wall Street Journal. Brown is now VP of corporate relations for NetApp. New Yahoo CMO Elisa Steele also previously worked at NetApp. Brown will directly report to Steele.

AllThingsD has Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz’s memo announcing Brown’s hiring:

Eric is a Silicon Valley communications veteran with 18 years of tech experience. Most recently, Eric and I collaborated at NetApp, where he spent the last nine years helping to transform the company into a multibillion dollar global enterprise. As Vice President of Corporate Relations, Eric managed a large global team and strategic communications program. He was the core communications executive responsible for the company’s recent revamp of brand strategy and execution. He also played a significant communications role in helping the company gain recognition by Fortune magazine as the “Best Company to Work for in America” in 2009.

Bartz appears to be almost done with her management makeover of Yahoo. The big test will be whether the recent reorganization and new hires can deliver concrete improvements in performance and product growth.

Bartz sent some mixed messages from the AllThingsD conference last week about search, saying that Yahoo would sell search/the company if the right offer was presented by Microsoft (”boatloads of money”). However later in her sit-down interview she added that search was also one of Yahoo’s most important properties.

If Microsoft brings “boatloads of money and the right technology,” Yahoo would be willing to strike a long-rumored search deal. So said Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz at the D7 Conference today, where All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher interviewed her on stage. Bartz followed up that statement by saying Microsoft would need “biiiig boatloads of money” if it wanted to buy Yahoo entirely.

That’s just one of the headlines coming out of Bartz’s appearance, but certainly not the only one. According to coverage from Barron’s, the Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, and All Things D here are other highlights:

• Yahoo is interested in video advertising and social networking, and would consider acquisitions in those two areas.
• Bartz said Google is “very good” in search and with its maps/Earth service, but Google doesn’t have the same reach & positioning that Yahoo has. “We are a place people come to be informed. Google is a place people go to do search.”
• Bartz listed Yahoo’s three most important properties/focuses as its home page, search, and its mail/news/sports/finance sites.
• She emphasized Yahoo’s deep content several times, at one point saying Facebook doesn’t give users news, stock quotes, and “a lot of things.”
• Yahoo needs to make its user experience simpler and more customizable.
• Bartz says Yahoo has 76% reach in the 18-24 year old demographic, and half the mobile users in the U.S.
• Yahoo’s new home page should debut this fall.
• Bartz wants Yahoo to get more local. On its new home page, users will be able to access highly local apps and information. She mentioned wanting to show high school football “Flip videos.”
• The need for better organizational structure at Yahoo is one of the main things that led her to accept the CEO position. “Yahoo is on its way to being a lot simpler and therefore faster on its feet,” Bartz said.
• Bartz doesn’t expect any more layoffs.

There’s more coverage of the Bartz interview on Techmeme.

Over the weekend, there seemed to be a lot of activity on people coming and going at search companies. I figured I sum up some of those moves in a short post here.

• Former Googler Douglas Bowman, who resigned from Google due to Google being too data centric has taken a job at Twitter, according to TechCrunch.
• Priti Choksi, a director of strategic partner development at Google has moved to Facebook, according to VentureBeat.
• Well-known Greg Linden is Leaving Microsoft after Microsoft has “dismantled” Live Labs.
• Brad Williams, Yahoo Inc.’s head of communications has left the company. Rumors say he was fired. More on this at the Wall Street Journal.
• Yahoo hired former Adobe executive, Bryan Lamkin, to lead up the applications group according to News.com.
• Former AOL executive, Mike Jones, will become the COO of MySpace according to TechCrunc.
• Yahoo is reportedly hiring up to 150 people in India.