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Yahoo! names Carol Bartz as the new CEO on January 13, 2008. The idea is to involve the management skills of the courageous and seasoned executive in reviving the company from a troubled phase that saw the failed merger negotiations with Microsoft, falling standards in search & online advertising business position and a string of faulty executive ranks. Following the appointment, stocks went up by 47 cents and advanced to a new figure of $13.54. Names previously considered for the job included Arun Sarin, the former Infospace CEO; and John Chapple, the Seattle venture capitalist and Yahoo board member.

The former Autodesk CEO has worked with Sun Microsystems, 3M, and Digital Equipment Corp. She's on the boards of Intel, Cisco Systems, and Network Appliance. “She’s the best player in the draft,” said John Chambers, the chief executive of Cisco Systems. He said Ms. Bartz often questioned him on strategic mergers and acquisitions. He said she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. During her 14-year tenure at Autodesk, she raised the company’s revenue from $300 million to $1.5 billion and its stock price to approximately 10-fold! She was incorporated into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame in 1997 and also operated on President Bush's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Despite this, analysts have serious doubts on how a CEO of a company that vends software to engineers and designers, could run a free website that draws users via branding and likewise generate an income through advertising. Quoting an analyst, Christa Quarles, “The most glaring deficiencies are that she has no consumer or Internet or advertising experience.” She said, the biggest question was whether she would involve someone else to fill in those deficiencies. But, Ms. Bartz, appears confident and has brushed off these questions saying that she was a fast learner and said that when she joined Autodesk, she didn’t even know automated design software.

Ms. Bartz’s appointment is likely to open the possibility that Yahoo will restart negotiations with Microsoft, which has said it is no longer interested in buying all of Yahoo, but would like to buy its lucrative Internet search business. Ms. Bartz might also choose some of the other strategies that Yahoo has contemplated before, like additional cost-cutting, selling assets and even a merger with the AOL Internet unit of Time Warner, which Yahoo has discussed intermittently for more than a year.

In a press conference with analysts, Bartz reportedly acknowledged the challenges that Yahoo faced and said that she believed the company’s brand and market position gave it a “huge opportunity to re-establish its stature.”� She said that after analysing the business, she planned to turn Yahoo’s focus outward. She also said that Yahoo had great potential and “could use a little management.”� Whether she does provide that effective management? We’ll have to wait and watch.