Yahoo Fires CEO Carol Bartz

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Just two and a half years after taking over at troubled Internet icon Yahoo, CEO Carol Bartz is out. Chief Financial Officer Tim Morse, brought in early on in Bartz's tenure, has been named interim CEO while Yahoo does a 'comprehensive strategic review,' according to .

The news was first reported by AllThingsD's Kara Swisher. TechCrunch also reported that Bartz messaged Yahoo employees that she was 'fired over the phone by Yahoo's Chairman of the Board,' clearly a parting shot at Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock, who expressed support for Bartz at Yahoo's annual meeting just a few months ago.

The tough talking, sometimes profane Bartz, a respected veteran of Autodesk and Sun Microsystems, had hoped to bring her management skills to bear on a company that was adrift for years and unable to capitalize on what is still one of the Web's largest audiences under one corporate roof. And she did clean house, hacking into Yahoo's infamous matrix management system that had slowed down the introduction of innovative products and jettisoning many operations. That helped Yahoo double its operating margins.

But nothing seemed to work well enough to recharge Yahoo's growth, and the steady flow of talent out Yahoo's yellow and purple campus not only underscored Bartz's lack of success at the turnaround, but made a turnaround all the more unlikely as time went on. Even as the online advertising rebounded quickly following the economy's 2008 meltdown buoying Google, Facebook, and a gazillion Web startups Yahoo's results remained subpar at best. Its shares, which closed at a little under $13 today, are at about the same level as when Bartz joined in January 2009.

It's possible that Yahoo couldn't be turned around, at least not this soon. After all, former CEO Tim Koogle, former Hollywood executive Terry Semel,
cars against humanity, and even Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang couldn't do it before her, not even with stockholder activist Carl Icahn's gun pointed at his head. But clearly Yahoo's board in particular Yang and Bostock, according to Swisher's report had lost patience in the face of a constant drumbeat of dissatisfaction from investors.

So what went wrong with what looked to some like a golden opportunity to restore Yahoo's yodel? In a nutshell:

Yahoo lost any innovation mojo it had left as one technology leader after another departed for Google, Facebook, and other greener pastures. Microsoft's virtual takeover of Yahoo's search ad business, following the software giant's interminable, ultimately failed attempt to buy the company, knocked the wind out of Yahoo's leading technologists and even Bartz admitted the deal wasn't working. And in today's advertising business,
personalized cards against humanity?, smart technology remains the key driver for attracting big advertisers gradually moving their print, radio, and TV ads to the Web.

Rivals such as Google and Facebook outran Yahoo in their pursuit of those big advertisers. Facebook or Google now serves more display ads than Yahoo depending on who's counting. This is especially tragic given Yahoo's historical success with mainstream advertisers, many of which until recently have been wary of Google and other ad tech wannabees from Silicon Valley.

Arguments with partners over Yahoo's lucrative interest in Chinese and Japanese Internet properties underscored to investors that they couldn't trust Yahoo to manage even the more promising parts of its business.

More than anything, Yahoo couldn't decide what it wanted to be a media company or a technology company. It's a problem that predated Bartz but one she of all people should have decided once and for all. Instead, she constantly struggled to define what made Yahoo special, either for its users or for its advertisers.

Fact is, today the most successful media companies are tech companies, and Bartz was never going to resurrect Yahoo's fortunes without investing in its technology underpinnings. Yahoo had and still has a huge audience, but mere audience isn't enough anymore, at least not without the kind of precision ad targeting that Google's search service and even social networks like Facebook now offer.

The most devastating assessment of Bartz's tenure comes directly from investors: In after hours trading today, Yahoo's shares are up more than 6%. As Citi analyst Mark Mahaney put it in a note to clients today,
cards against himanity, Bartz 'leaves in September 2011 with YHOO clearly being a deteriorating asset with limited plays on key secular growth trends like social, mobile, local, and video.' He adds: 'The next CEO and the existing management team and board have their work cut out for themselves in turning the company around.'

That's especially likely given that it looks like Yahoo will undergo yet another assault by investors and by various well heeled players such as private equity firms,
cards humanity, AT Verizon, or News Corp. that may want to buy out Yahoo, take it private, split it up, or do something else to extract value that Bartz couldn't. Meanwhile, until the mess gets sorted out, rivals will continue to steal its business from this once great Internet pioneer.

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FCA - Ferrovia Centro-Atlântica SA issued this content on 2016-01-07 and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 2016-01-07 01:43:16 UTC

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