14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo has had a confusing past few months. Ever since it got rid of its CEO in September, the company's future has been unclear, to say the least. On the one hand, it has been looking for a replacement. On the other, it was looking for buyers as well, either for the whole company or just for its valuable Asian assets.
But it seems that at least part of the equation is getting closer to being solved, the company is said to be close to naming a new CEO, PayPal President Scott Thompson.
There's nothing official at this stage, but All Things D says that an announcement of the new CEO is expected momentarily, within a day, though things may still change at the last minute.
Thompson runs eBay's PayPal division, arguably the crowning jewel of the company. The payments unit has been growing furiously for the past several years and dominates the market.
Thompson has been its President since 2008 and was its CTO before that. Previous to eBay, he worked at a few financial institutions, in technology-related positions.
It will be an interesting choice for Yahoo, which hasn't had a technology-oriented CEO in quite a while. The company as a whole, while still essentially a technology company, has been focused more on media than on the tech side.
If he does come in as CEO, Thompson has quite a lot of work ahead of him. His primary objective should be defining Yahoo as a company, something former CEO Carol Bartz wasn't able to do in the years she spent there.
It remains to be seen whether the board, which is as much to blame for the fate of Yahoo as anyone else, will be able to allow Thompson to do his job.