14 DAY TRIAL // It only takes one talk with an executive in order to find out what dreams are made out of. Particularly my dreams, and the talk, I'm sad to say, wasn't one that I had, but that Marius Pahomi had. The private meeting with Toby Coppel, Managing Director of Yahoo! Europe, brought an update about the Eastern Europe expansion plan that the Sunnyvale Company has.
According to Pahomi, a couple of weeks ago Coppel went to Bucharest to attend a meeting with both government officials and representatives from the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, and because Romania is one of the two EMEA countries that Yahoo is said to come to in a partnership with local media trusts, he also met with the people from one of the country's biggest company when it comes to that.
The recent changes in personnel going down at the Yahoo! Europe that I talked about last month seem to start having an impact, the moves have been made faster and the game of chess between Google and Yahoo doesn't look like one between Kasparov and, well, me. The reported appointment of Kristof Fahy to a top role that would give him the power to revitalize the company's brand across Europe.
What would have made Romania the next logical step? Well, among others the fact that 95 percent of the Internet users there are using Yahoo!'s Instant Messenger service on a regular basis. With such a high percentage, it would seem fantastic that the move and the deal haven't been closed down yet, but let's keep in mind that the Easter Block countries still have the lowest numbers when it comes to percentage of the population using the Internet. In other words, 95% out of the 22%, according to a chart drawn by Eurostat.
But, hey, if it's going down, so be it. I'll be the one sleeping on the sidewalk next to the "Welcome, Yahoo!" sign waiting for it to happen.