Jen: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Yahoo is expecting to name Autodesk former chief Carol Bartz as its next CEO. The story notes that Bartz has a tough road ahead of her turning the troubled giant around and soothing restelss shareholders. We want to know this: If she's appointed chief how will she play with other Yahoo executives including newspaper consortium champion Sue Decker (whose name has been floated as a possible CEO candidate too)? Or will Bartz come in and make everyone clean out their desks?
Fitz: As the Journal reports, Bartz has a big decision in front of her – and one that could have huge implications for the 400 or so papers in the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium. They’re depending on Yahoo to continue to roll out, and improve, the sophisticated behavioral and contextual ad software that can deliver exactly the eyeballs advertisers want.
Here’s the Journal:
Bartz will face difficult challenges as Yahoo's CEO, as a number of critics including current board member Carl Icahn have advocated splitting up its search advertising and display advertising businesses, effectively pulling out of direct competition with Google in a search market that Google dominates. However, executives including Decker and Yang, who remains with the company, have argued against splitting the two businesses.
In addition, while Microsoft has backed away from its bid to acquire all of Yahoo, it continues to express interest in working out a deal that would lend it control of Yahoo's search business.
Newspapers have partnered with Microsoft, which has a stake in the consortium, in other ways but always gingerly. Bartz’s big decision could mean newspapers will have a big decision in front of them, too.
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