Yahoo’s short-lived interim CEO Ross Levinsohn, who was replaced by the board two weeks ago by a bright shiny blonde from Google, said Monday that he’s leaving the company.
He didn’t say if he had a destination.
He wasn’t expected to stay after Marissa Mayer got there.
As CEO Levinsohn succeeded in defusing the ill-considered infringement suit his fired predecessor Scott Thompson lodged against Facebook and calmed the water roiled by Thompson’s sudden departure caused by phony academic credentials.
The board, led by proxy fight victor Dan Loeb, who discovered Thompson’s fib, traded the media and advertising executive for a technologist it’s expecting to make Yahoo’s web sites more relevant.
Levinsohn, who worked at Fox Interactive Media where he bought MySpace and cut a huge ad deal with Google as well as HBO and AltaVista, joined Yahoo in late 2010 to run its media sites and Americas ad sales.
Yahoo and Mayer acknowledged his contributions. Marissa wished him well and said in an e-mail that wended its way to All Things Digital that he “helped keep the company moving, closed important deals, and assembled a very talented team.”