Yahoo Coming to Europe With a Fresh Approach

Looking at it from a detached point of view, Yahoo's latest "meddling" in its European business looks like it's the end of an old cowboy versus Indians movie: the cavalry just rides in at the end, when things either really look desperate as the wagons are in a circle and the feather wearing enemies are circling it on their horses and are throwing firing arrows, while the defenders have very little ammo left, (preferably just one last clip)… or the problems are already resolved.

Yahoo has just appointed BlackBerry and former Orange executive, Kristof Fahy, to a top role in order to revitalize the company's brand across Europe, according to Mark Sweney, from the "Guardian Unlimited".

"We are excited to have someone of his calibre and experience joining the Yahoo team as we transform the company to being customer centric in everything we do," said Toby Coppel, the Yahoo! Europe managing director. Coppel has been trying to engineer a turnaround of the Yahoo operation, ever since he has been appointed in the position in April, earlier this year.

"The company wants to focus on services that users are interested in on a daily basis, such as news and sport, with other operations, such as price comparison service Kelkoo, under strategic review," says Sweney. The reason for this attempt is that Yahoo!'s share of the European search market is just a little over 3 percent, compared with around 18 percent in the United States and 14 percent worldwide, according to ComScore.

I guess it's the first option of the two in the cowboy movie comparison that I have presented you with earlier. It's just that I'm not sure if there's still anything left to save or if all that can still be done in an honourable attempt to set things right. Yahoo won't be able to just give up on its European market, so it'll probably be one hell of a fight. Good luck with that, Kristof!