In a terse e-mail to employees sent late on Tuesday, Ms Bartz said that she had been ousted “over the phone” in a conversation with Roy Bostock, Yahoo chairman, and that she wished remaining employees luck.
Yahoo said in a subsequent press release that the board had named Tim Morse, chief financial officer, as interim chief executive as it seeks a permanent replacement.
Investors cheered early word of the change, sending Yahoo shares up more than 6 per cent in after-hours trading from a closing price of $12.91. That is about the level they traded at when Ms Bartz joined the company in January 2009 and well below the price offered in a takeover bid from Microsoft the year before.
Ms Bartz, formerly the chief executive of design software maker Autodesk, was initially greeted warmly by Yahoo shareholders after the previous leadership failed to consummate an acquisition by Microsoft, which was willing to pay a large premium to bolster its search-engine competition with Google.
But Ms Bartz came under fire before her first year was up after negotiating a more limited alliance with Microsoft. In that deal, Yahoo tapped Microsoft to produce the automated part of its search results, saving development money but splitting ad revenue.
The complex arrangement has failed to generate as much advertising revenue as executives had predicted. In the meantime, Yahoo has shown nowhere near the growth in user time spent on its site as more innovative and younger companies, such as Facebook and Twitter.
That has kept display advertising revenue, where Yahoo had long been the top player in North America, hobbled as well. Researcher firm eMarketer predicted in June that Facebook would pass Yahoo in that category this year.
Yahoo had at least two major rounds of job cuts under Ms Bartz as she tried to refocus the company on core strengths and pitch advertisers on premium packages.
The final strike against Ms Bartz may have been her handling of two of Yahoo’s most valuable remaining possessions, minority investments in Yahoo Japan and in Alibaba Group.
Under shareholder pressure, Ms Bartz has said Yahoo is exploring ways to monetise the stake in Softbank’s Japanese Yahoo network without the tax penalty that would come with an outright sale.
But though those talks continue in private, a fight with Alibaba and its founder Jack Ma has played out in an embarrassingly public way.
Alibaba, which is the largest e-commerce company in China, turned over control of its online payments unit to a group run by Mr Ma without establishing terms for the group to compensate Alibaba. Yahoo has a board seat at Alibaba but said it was informed belatedly of the sale, raising questions about whether it could be squeezed out of more Alibiba value.
After months of heated negotiations, Alibaba agreed in July to keep 37.5 per cent of Alipay or receive a payment of between $2bn and $6bn if the payment business goes public, plus royalties.
Carol Bartz Profile
Director, President and Chief Executive Officer
Sunnyvale , CA
Sector: TECHNOLOGY / Internet Information Providers
Officer since: 2009
San Jose , CA
Sector: TECHNOLOGY / Networking & Communication Devices
62 Years Old
Ms. Bartz has served as our Chief Executive Officer and as a member of our Board since January 2009 and as our President since April 2009.
Ms. Bartz served as the Executive Chairman of the Board of Autodesk, Inc., a computer-aided design software provider, from May 2006 to February 2009, as Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Autodesk from April 1992 to April 2006 and as a director of Autodesk from April 1992 to February 2009. From 1983 to April 1992, she served in a number of positions at Sun Microsystems, Inc., a provider of computer systems, software and services (now a subsidiary of Oracle Corporation), including as Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations and as an executive officer. Currently, Ms. Bartz also serves as the lead director of Cisco Systems, Inc., a networking technology company, a director of the National Science and Technology Medals Foundation, and a director of the Paley Center for Media, a non-profit organization. She previously served as a director of BEA Systems, Inc., a provider of database-related software (now a subsidiary of Oracle Corporation), Intel Corporation, a semiconductor chip design and manufacturing company, and NetApp, Inc., a provider of data-storage and data-management tools. Ms. Bartz holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin.
高通公司本周一宣布，高通已经并购了另外一家手势识别技术厂商GestureTek的部分业务和研发部门。这次并购使高通取得了一些手势识别方面的知识产权和重要的工程技术资源。
