No one is really surprised by last night's news that Yahoo announced "leadership change" including firing Carol Bartz over the phone. I mean, she had only 33% approval rating and the stock rose 6% on the news of the firing.
Yahoo said:
Yahoo! Inc. under which the Board of Directors has appointed Timothy Morse interim Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately, replacing Carol Bartz, who has been removed by the Board from her role as Chief Executive Officer.The Board has also named key senior Yahoo! executives to a newly formed Executive Leadership Council tasked with supporting Morse in managing the Company's day-to-day operations until a permanent chief executive is appointed, as well as supporting a comprehensive strategic review that the Board has initiated to position the Company for future growth.
Bartz emailed everyone via her iPad saying:
I am very sad to tell you that I’ve just been fired over the phone by Yahoo’s Chairman of the Board. It has been my pleasure to work with all of you and I wish you only the best going forward.
Carol took over as the CEO of Yahoo in January 2009 after Jerry Yang replaced Terry Semel as CEO in 2007. It has been a rough road for Yahoo, very rough.
I am still so sad about Yahoo, so sad. But will I ever forgive Bartz for pulling Yahoo out of the search space, at least in terms of building backend search technology? I doubt it.
It is hard to see what future Yahoo has but I do hope the next CEO, not the interim, has a clear future for Yahoo.
If Carol did anything well, it was fire a lot of people and cut a tremendous amount of costs.
Do you think Yahoo will have a solid future from here on out?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
