New York, June 29 (IANS) An Indian-origin man has been given a key role in the restructuring at Yahoo!. The new structure consolidates responsibility around two senior executives, Ash Patel, who has been with the company since 1996, and Hilary Schneider, both working under president Sue Decker. Patel, as executive vice-president of the platforms and infrastructure division, has so far been responsible for an array of the company’s technology infrastructure.

He will now head the newly formed audience products division that will be responsible for global product strategy and product management for many crucial Internet services, including search and e-mail.

Patel is the only South Asian on the official management team page.

Since starting at Yahoo!, he has played a key role in designing and enhancing MyYahoo!, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Chat and many other products that continue to impact millions of users.

Before joining Yahoo!, Patel was a principal member of the technical staff at Oracle Corporation, and before that held many software engineer and development positions at technology companies in Silicon Valley and in London.

He holds a degree in Computer Science from the Kings College University of London.