In addition to firing CEO Carol Bartz, Yahoo’s board has now *unofficially* put the company up for sale. The inside person at Yahoo who spoke with the Wall Street Journal on the Bartz firing also told the paper that “Yahoo is open to selling itself to the right bidder.” That is pretty much the equivalent of sticking a big FOR SALE sign on the front lawn.

According to WSJ’s sources Carol Bartz was fired after the board spent two weeks studying the company’s assets  and concluding that Bartz was doing a very poor job. If this is really true, one wonders what on earth the board has been doing for the past two years, while pretty much everyone else concluded the same thing. Maybe the board needs to follow Carol Bartz out the door…

As statement of fact – there is no quick fix for Yahoo. The company needs to accept and ultimately embrace the fact that it is now a media, content, and communications company, and make heavy investments in those areas. It needs to radically streamline itself cutting out dead weight and poor performing divisions. And it needs a leader with a clear produt vision for the Yahoo brand, and the ability to execute and follow through on it.

The trouble with the above prescription is that, if the board is equally happy to just sell Yahoo, this leader will be even harder to find. Why jump in to a sinking ship with a bucket if the people who own the ship are fine with it being sunk? And, in the meantime, the company will be even more firmly entrenched in the wagon rut that has crippled its movement and growth for the last few years.

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Posted in General Ramblings by Matt No Comments Yet