Bartz Blasts Yahoo

Let me go into this saying I don't know everything that went behind Bartz's release. It did seem to surprise many, and I have yet to see an analysis that shows it was a necessary move. In fact, vague suspicion has been the main conclusion for what I have read. Having said that, I have a new hero. Carol Bartz speaks her mind, and cuts through the crap to get to the root of a problem.  In her first interview, she cut right to the meat and said Yahoo "fucked her over."  I know, I had to read it several times myself.  What delightful honesty and lack of fear!

Bartz told the magazine that she called Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock at 6:06 p.m. ET on Tuesday for a previously scheduled conversation. When they connected, Bartz said that Bostock read from what sounded like a legal document. In her typical blunt way, Bartz called Bostock out.

"Why don't you have the balls to tell me yourself?" Bartz recalls telling Bostock. At the end of his reading of the document, Bartz told her one-time board colleague, "I thought you were classier."

In the interview, Bartz lays bare the dilemma confounding Yahoo's board. The company is facing enormous pressure to boost revenue, particularly after having rejected Microsoft's $44.6 billion bid for the company in 2008, the year before she joined Yahoo.

"The board was so spooked by being cast as the worst board in the country," Bartz says. "Now they're trying to show that they're not the doofuses that they are."

My bad, I had it in my head that turning down Microsoft had been one of her first decisions. She came in afterwards but I also know that after that refusal, Yahoo picked up their level of customer service and their existing ones began to move smoother. Yahoo also showed more of an interest in their users, and that was all under Bartz's lead. It wasn't enough to win me back, but I love Yahoo much in the same way you remember your fist love. Fond memories, but okay with the separation.

I am in no place to measure her success, but I admire her balls. She is a woman who knows how to hold her own and refused to play the game. Because she has been so straightforward and Yahoo has been to tight-lipped, I have to assume she has some legitimate ground to stand on. Bravo for speaking plainly and cutitng through the BS.