Zawodny Leaves Yahoo; Weiner To Go? And Linsley Departs Ask

Two big names have left Yahoo and Ask and speculation is that a third is to go. Below, more about he departures of Yahoo’s Jeremy Zawdony, Ask’s Peter Linsley, and Yahoo’s Jeffrey Weiner, who is rumored to be leaving soon.

Jeremy Zawdony just announced he is leaving Yahoo. Jeremy has been with Yahoo for over eight years now and was one of Yahoo’s most prolific bloggers. As an analogy, Zawdony is the Scoble or Cutts of Yahoo. Major loss for Yahoo? In my opinion, Yes. Jeremy did not say what his future holds but he did offer some advice for those at Yahoo:

As for the future of Yahoo, everyone working at Yahoo today knows in their gut what Yahoo should be and needs to be. My advice is to work on making that happen. Don’t let anyone else (inside or outside the company) try to tell you what Yahoo is. Trust your gut.

Peter Linsley, former Senior Product Manager for Search at Ask.com, has left Ask.com to join Google. Peter was the man at Ask that knew everything there was about how the Ask.com algorithm, search results, user interface, and so on worked. If I had a question about relevancy or the search page, he knew the answer off the top of his head. Peter hasn’t announced that he left Ask.com, but it is not secret. He left and is now working at Google as a product manager and is working on the image search team. Major loss for Ask.com? In my opinion, Yes. Peter does have a blog at PeterLinsley.com which is not updated all that often.

Finally, there is a lot of speculation that Yahoo’s Executive Vice President, Jeff Weiner, is going to be leaving Yahoo soon. Weiner is on paternity leave for the past four weeks and returns this Monday. It is expect that he will announce his departure today or tomorrow. Where will he work next? Rumors are that he will join “Accel Partners and Greylock Partners and perhaps even Benchmark Capital or Sequoia Capital,” said Kara Swisher.