sacred cow

Bartz of 100 Days: Tough Talk to Microsoft Talks

Kara Swisher in News on April 13, 2009 at 8:30 am PT

Here’s an interesting irony–Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz will have her 99th day in office on the very one that the Internet giant will announce its first-quarter earnings: April 21, 2009 at 2 p.m. PST. Technically, it will mean that she has been running Yahoo for 100 days, a time when most administrations get their first evaluation. Thus, if it’s good enough for President Obama, it’s good enough for Bartz! While most expect the results for the quarter to be weak, due to the econalypse, the overall verdict from BoomTown’s needling of Yahoos to give me info on their new leader recently: Love, love, love Bartz’s innate decisiveness, and wanting more of the same.

Where the Chickens Would Come Home to Roost, If Yahoo and Microsoft Ever Did Do a Search Deal

Kara Swisher in News on January 29, 2009 at 5:19 am PT

In Yahoo’s fourth-quarter earnings conference call earlier this week, new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz went out of her way to ho-hum all over the possibility of a search deal with Microsoft. Of course, it was all cooked up and well rehearsed by Bartz, who knows how to play the expectations game as well as anyone else, especially as she endeavors to come up to speed on the various prospects for Yahoo going forward. It’s called, um, playing chicken.

Yahoo CEO Countdown, 26 Days to Go: As Chernin Declines, Will a Dark Horse Emerge?

Kara Swisher in News on December 5, 2008 at 7:24 am PT

With Yahoo board Chairman Roy Bostock reportedly assuring investors and others that the company will have a CEO in place by the end of the year, it seems prudent for BoomTown to initiate an official Yahoo CEO Countdown. After all, this column had a 100-Day No-Sacred-Cows Vision Quest to mark the time that Jerry Yang said he needed to give Yahoo a top-to-bottom look-see when he took over last summer as CEO. So here’s today’s update: No Peter Chernin and a lot of thorny issues for other candidates.

Yahoo Earnings: What to Expect When You're Not Expecting (Much)

Kara Swisher in News on October 21, 2008 at 6:55 am PT

Here’s a bright spot in Yahoo’s third-quarter earnings announcement later today: Sources told BoomTown that the company will not announce a specific number of layoffs tomorrow, although it will give an overall percentage of employees and costs to be cut. In other words, you get to practice your long division and multiplication skills! Fun! Other than that, of course, when Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang gets on the horn at at 2 p.m. Pacific time, the outlook is likely to be a wall-to-wall glumfest.

Who Has Stolen the Old Jerry Yang? (But No Need to Return Him!)

Kara Swisher in News on July 20, 2008 at 2:38 am PT

Could the new and improved Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang actually manage to beat back the proxy fight being waged against him by activist investor Carl Icahn? It increasingly looks that way, with only 12 days to go until Yahoo’s annual meeting on August 1. But exactly which Yang will be running Yahoo, if he does win, is probably the most important question shareholders need to ask. Would that be the seemingly energetic Yang of the past two weeks, invigorated by the battle with Icahn and his new best friend and Yahoo foe, Microsoft? Or will it be the other Yang?