Key Executive Leaves Yahoo for Start-Up

John Wu, chief architect of Yahoo’s industry-leading search engine, jumped ship to Hong Kong-based start-up Alibaba.com, a business-to-business Internet marketplace. Unlike Microsoft, Netscape and other technology leaders that have lost many key personnel to Web start-ups, Yahoo has enjoyed low turnover and has faced few defections by top executives and engineers. Analysts doubt that Wu’s departure, though disappointing for the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company, will hamper Yahoo’s search or e-commerce services. Wu was a three-year veteran at Yahoo. “Search by itself is a pretty mature product for Yahoo,” analyst Safa Rashtchy of U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray said. “No single individual is going to make a major impact at the technical or operational level. There are enough layers.”