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There is no getting around the fact that Carol Bartz’s tenure as the CEO of Yahoo was nothing short of tumultuous, but according to Kara Swisher at All Things D that time has come to an end as the Yahoo board has sent her packing and put CFO Tim Morse in as an interim CEO.
No word is being given, yet, as to the board’s reasoning behind the letting go of the feisty Bartz but there is also no getting around the fact that this is happening after 30 months of uncertainty about where Yahoo is headed as a company.
Bartz’s departure is coming at the point as well where Yahoo is rumored to be in the running for the purchase of Hulu, although now that Bartz is out one has to wonder if this is a deal she was trying to broker and therefor will not see the light of day, or if it is something that the upper management of Yahoo and the board wanted and Bartz was against; which could have been the final nail in her CEO coffin.
As Kara noted in her post it was interesting that the board went with an interim CEO and saying that a search for a permanent CEO was just starting rather than having someone to take the position from the get-go of Bartz leaving. Kara also noted that co-founder Jerry Yang has become more involved with the company of late and these two factors have lead some to suggest that there might be a larger deal around Yahoo in the works.
Here’s the thing though, Yahoo’s stock is stagnant, the company is basically adrift like a drunk sailor wandering the streets of some red light district hoping it can get lucky with something, anything, hence the rumor about them being in the running to buy up Hulu.
The thing is that any Hulu deal is fraught with major problems regardless of who ends up buying it, mainly because the entertainment companies that already own it have a vested interest in it failing; or at least operating like a hamstrung pig in a poke. For a struggling company like Yahoo to step up and buy it might make good press but the idea of one aimless company buying up what could very end up being nothing more than a shell with a name makes no sense.
I don’t know, and won’t pretend I do know what the solution to Yahoo’s slide into irrelevancy is but it sure does feel like something is swirling the toilet bowl. I wonder though if there’s a call being made by Yang to Ballmer?
