Yahoo Names Carol Bartz New CEO

Yahoo ... happy days may be here again for the struggling internet company. The Associated Press reports:

Yahoo Inc. named technology veteran Carol Bartz as its new chief executive Tuesday, bringing in a no-nonsense leader known for developing a clear focus _ something that has eluded the struggling Internet company during a three-year slump.

The decision to lure Bartz, 60, away from software maker Autodesk Inc. ends Yahoo's two-month search to replace co-founder Jerry Yang, who surrendered the CEO reins after potentially lucrative deals with rivals Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. both collapsed.

Bartz's appointment could set the stage for Microsoft to renew its efforts to buy Yahoo's Internet search operations as a way of mounting a more serious threat to Google, the market leader. Microsoft had been reluctant to deal with Yang because he rebuffed several previous overtures, including a $47.5 billion offer to buy Yahoo in its entirety last May.

Microsoft subsequently withdrew that bid, valued at $33 per share, and now Yahoo's stock price hovers around $12. Yang had hoped to placate shareholders by using Google's superior technology to sell some of the ads alongside Yahoo's search results, but that idea unraveled in November after federal antitrust regulators threatened to block the deal.

Bartz "is the exact combination of seasoned technology executive and savvy leader that the board was looking for," said Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock.

There is one person who is not real happy with the decision to bring in Bartz.

Yahoo's decision to bring in an outsider apparently irked its president, Susan Decker, who also was a candidate for the CEO job. She now plans to resign after a transitional period. Both Decker and Bartz are on Intel Corp.'s board of directors.

What struck me about this story is that the person who might have assumed they would be considered for the CEO position was Yahoo president Susan Decker. It's not often that one woman replaces another in the running for a top stop in corporate America. Maybe things are looking up for women. Both women are on Intel Corp.'s board of directors.

Bartz's track record indicates she will move quickly to build upon Yahoo's strengths while doing her best to shed the weaknesses.

"She is able to see the essence of things because she doesn't spend a lot of time worrying about how people are going to feel," said Nilofer Merchant, a former Autodesk manager who is now CEO of technology consultant Rubicon. "She is driven by doing the best thing for the business."

Forrester Research analyst David Card said Yahoo desperately needs someone to crack the whip after years of drifting aimlessly despite having a vast online audience, which it touts as 500 million people worldwide. [...]

While Bartz was CEO, Autodesk's annual revenue ballooned from nearly $300 million to $1.5 billion. Perhaps more importantly to Yahoo's long-suffering shareholders, Autodesk's stock price rose by an annual average of nearly 20 percent during Bartz's reign, beating the 10.6 percent annual average for the Standard & Poor's 500 index.

Seems impressive to me, but everyone has their critics.

Despite Bartz's resume, she will likely face questions about whether she is a good fit at Yahoo because she lacks any background in advertising _ the primary source of Yahoo's income.

Yahoo also is far larger than Autodesk, with annual revenue of more than $7 billion and roughly 13,000 employees, nearly twice the size of Autodesk's work force.

As one of the first women to run a technology company, Bartz is used to being underestimated. Even after she had been Autodesk's CEO for years, some of her male counterparts occasionally mistook her for an administrative assistant while she was attending industry conferences.

Now what was I just saying about things getting better for women?