Yahoo! Names Carol Bartz as CEO

Yahoo! has appointed Carol Bartz, former executive chairman of Autodesk, as its chief executive to replace Jerry Yang who stepped down in November last year.

Bartz (pictured), who will begin her new position immediately and join the board, worked at Autodesk, a computer aided design software company for 14 years and became chairman in 2006.

Roy Bostock, chairman of the Yahoo! board, said: "We are very excited to have Carol Bartz leading Yahoo! into its next era of growth. She is the exact combination of seasoned technology executive and savvy leader that the board was looking for, and we are thrilled to have attracted such a world-class talent to Yahoo! She is admired in the Valley as well as on Wall Street for her deep management expertise, strong customer orientation, excellent people skills, and firm understanding of the challenges facing our industry."

Search firm Heidrick & Struggles, which headed up the CEO search, has said that Yahoo! would also be looking for a strong number 2 with more internet and product experience if a CEO with less online background was selected.

The search firm is thought to have received a number of rejections as candidates turned down what many see as a very difficult job.

Bartz, who has had executive experience at Sun Microsystems, Digital Equipment Corporation and 3M, admitted she faced an enormous struggle.

Bartz said: "There is no denying that Yahoo! has faced enormous challenges over the last year, but I believe there is now an extraordinary opportunity to create value for our shareholders and new possibilities for our customers, partners and employees. We will seize that opportunity."

Yang, meanwhile, is still a member of the board, but has returned to his former role as chief Yahoo!, focusing on global strategy and inspiration rather than executive leadership.

His resignation was seen as the consequence of his failure to please investors on two fronts.

Many held him responsible for the company losing out on the $44.6bn (£30bn) Microsoft deal earlier this year. Yang was understood to be waiting for a higher offer, but was also antagonistic to the software giant.

As an alternative strategy, Yang pursued talks with AOL and reached a ten-year search advertising alliance that would have seen Yahoo! profit from allowing Google-sold entries to appear in its listings. However, the alliance fell apart after opposition from the US Department of Justice.

He subsequently admitted that Yahoo!'s best option was to reach a deal with Microsoft, but his admission and dithering was seen by some as too little, too late as the window of opportunity with the software giant had closed.