Yahoo up for sale? And why CEO was fired over phone

Having fired chief executive officer Carol Bartz on Tuesday, the Yahoo board has reportedly decided to put the web giant up for sale.

A Wall Street Journal report quoted a Yahoo insider as saying that 'Yahoo is open to selling itself to the right bidder'.

The board of the 0nline media giant fired Bartz, who was brought on board two years ago to turn around the company's troubled fortunes. However, that did not happen. The board was not happy with her job.

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Bartz's dismissal was not a major shock to Yahoo watchers as her departure has been speculated for more than a year, but the timing of the action comes as a surprise, says Gartner's research vice president Allen Weiner.

Bartz had another 15 months left on her contract. Neither the micro nor macro view of Yahoo's performance since Bartz took over in January 2009 paint a pretty picture.

The big picture shows that the Microsoft-Yahoo search alliance has not gone to either party's satisfaction and that Yahoo has lost a number of key executives and was caught so short-staffed is pointed to being undermanned as a reason for a disappointing Q2.

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The conundrum for Yahoo in recent years has been its inability to develop an identity and sell that to employees, advertisers, partners and consumers. Yahoo has some great piece parts -- messaging used by hundreds of millions of users worldwide; a sports brand that stands apart from other web properties and strong content plays in news and finance, says Allen Weiner.

Yahoo has yet to find a leader who has the vision to frame those pieces into cogent opportunity that would lead a transformation resulting in a 21st century media-technology power.

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Yahoo's investors too seemed glad that Bartz had been canned as the stock shot up by 6 per cent following the news of her ouster.

Industry watchers say that Yahoo might be on the decline but it is still a profitable company.

But the big question remains who will want to buy Yahoo. Could Microsoft renew its bid for the media major or would some other media giant look to buy it?

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Why Bartz was fired over the phone

The firing of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz over the phone by the company's chairman Roy Bostock has been a major talking point.

Now Business Insider reports that there is no mystery behind the reason. Apparently, Bartz was on an aircraft on Tuesday 'on the East coast, while Bostock was coming West' and thus there was no chance for them to meet in person.

Thus, to convey the board's decision to fire Bartz, before word leaked out, it was decided to break the news to her on the phone.