Web portal and search giant Yahoo has named Carol Bartz, the former executive chairman of design software company Autodesk, to replace co-founder Jerry Yang as its chief executive officer.
Bartz said in a statement that the company, which has long lagged behind Google in the quest for pay-per-click Internet ad revenue, can be made competitive again.
“There is no denying that Yahoo has faced enormous challenges over the last year,” she said. “But I believe there is now an extraordinary opportunity to create value for our shareholders and new possibilities for our customers, partners and employees. We will seize that opportunity.”
Bartz, who relinquished roles as chairman, CEO and president at Autodesk in 2006, said in an analyst call late Tuesday that while it was premature to outline detailed plans for turning around the ailing Web company, her basic orientation was to “kick some butt.”
“I’m having my first manager meeting in 10 minutes,” she said. “Let’s not put ourselves in some crazy timeline. Let’s give this company some frigging breathing room. Everybody on the outside deciding what Yahoo should or shouldn’t do—that’s going to stop.”
The appointment, announced late Tuesday, ends a two-month search for a new CEO for the Internet pioneer, which has been plagued by dwindling search market share, falling revenues, a recent round of layoffs and an ongoing loss of executive talent.
In fact at the same time as the Bartz announcement, Yahoo revealed that company president Sue Decker will leave her job after Bartz’s transition is complete. Decker worked at Yahoo for almost nine years, most of that time as the company’s chief financial officer. She was elevated to the president’s job by Yang and was known to have been in the running for the CEO spot.
“I have decided that it is time for me to pursue my next chapter, just as Yahoo is charting the next phase of its path-finding journey,” Decker said in an internal memo obtained and published by the blog Silicon Valley Insider.
Yang, who co-founded Yahoo with David Filo in 1994 when both were Stamford students, took over as company CEO after Terry Semel’s resignation in June 2007. Yang came in for criticism from shareholders last year for turning away a $47 billion buyout offer from search rival Microsoft as insufficient. Dissident investor Carl Icahn had himself named to the company’s board along with two supporters and has threatened to sue over the failed Microsoft deal.
Last November, Google announced it was suspending a planned partnership that would have allowed Yahoo to sell Google pay-per-click ads rather than its own product in cases where the competitor’s ads would have brought in more revenue for Yahoo.
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