In a move that seemed to be a long time coming, Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz was fired recently after less than three years as head of the company. Although she performed well at times for Yahoo!, her approval rating had fallen to dismal levels recently and many people were calling for her termination. Bartz received a 90% approval rating in her first quarter, but it declined from there. In her last quarter she received a 33% approval rating, and dipped as low as 24% at one point.
Bartz began her tenure as CEO with the task of bringing Yahoo! back to relevance after the failure of Yahoo! Co-founder Jerry Yang’s experiment at CEO. With such high expectations, the initial support and grace she received quickly turned to disappointment. As such, it seemed to be only a matter of time before she was fired and the news of her termination caused Yahoo!’s stock price to increase.
Now that Bartz is gone, Yahoo! is left with an important choice on what to do next. Rumors of Yahoo! selling parts or all of its company are being circulated around, but it seems much more likely that they will instead try to find a game-changing CEO to run the company. What Yahoo! needs is a Steve Jobs as their CEO. Jobs, the former CEO of Apple, is seen as one of the greatest CEO’s of our time. He effectively saved Apple from the brink of bankruptcy and morphed it into one of the most successful companies in the world with a revenue of over $60 billion, in a little over 10 years.
Although it is unlikely that Yahoo! can find another Steve Jobs, there are a lot of options for the company going forward. Should Yahoo! cut its losses and sell the company? Or should they go after a game-changing CEO? If so, who?