Now that Carol Bartz is ensconced in her office at Yahoo and starting to get a grip of what is what with the company the pundits are beginning the typical second guessing that goes on whenever a major shakeup happens at any company. With Yahoo though it is also a time of re-evaluating the road forward for all parts of the company. Kara Swisher over at Boomtown is reporting that there was a meeting between Ballmer, Yahoo’s Bostock and AOL’s Jeff Bewkes and while the actual conversation between the three power players isn’t know that hasn’t stopped the reading of the tea leaves.
The thing is though that this happened almost immediately following the selection of Bartz’ as the new Yahoo CEO and she wasn’t included in the meeting which strikes me as rather strange. One would hope that Bostock isn’t trying to do an end run around the new CEO in an effort to sell off all or parts of Yahoo now that Yang and Decker are gone.As Carol Bartz made it very plain in one of her first meeting of the tech pundits and Yahoo employees – her gut did not favour such a deal and to be honest I hope she sticks to listening to her gut on this one.
I think far more important for the well being of Yahoo; and I don’t mean for the stockholders, would be for Bartz to start at the top and get rid of the bureaucracy that has reduced a once vibrant company to almost a shell of its former self. the first place this should start – especially if Bostock is still trying to sell off parts of the company is to ask for his resignation. How can anyone expect to bring life back to a company when one of the principals is still trying to sell off parts; or the whole, of the company.
Yahoo has been hit hard with the brain drain caused by Yang and company trying to build a poison pill that would keep Microsoft from swallowing the company but that doesn’t mean that there are still some smart dedicated people at the company. In my opinion these are the people that Bartz should be looking to as the needed ingredient to bring the company back to life.
The fact is there is still a lot about Yahoo that holds great promise as a serious competitor to Google and Microsoft and yes it may have taken some really bad broadside shots that could have crippled any other company but Yahoo is still here. In for no other reason than to show its workers and Wall Street Bartz should seriously consider rebooting the whole company from the ground up. All the pieces; as separated as they may seem, are there to bring the company back from the near dead. It will just take Bartz and a dedicated team of real Yahoo employees to pull it off.
Besides it would be so much fun to watch all those pundit that were getting out the shovels to have to turn around and start eating their words.
