The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Yahoo has hired Carol Bartz to become the company’s new Chief Executive, replacing the outgoing Jerry Yang. Bartz served as the CEO of Autodesk, a maker of CAD (computer-aided design) software, from 1992 to 2006, and is also a member of the boards at Cisco and Intel.
First reaction: what exactly does Autodesk have to do with a consumer-focused Internet company like Yahoo? Bartz certainly sounds like she has a long history of running a big company – Autodesk has more than 7,000 employees and $2 billion in annual revenue – but what expertise and vision does she have that’s relevant to one of the world’s biggest Web companies, in desperate need of re-inventing itself?
The appointment of Bartz has been rumored since last week, when Kara Swisher reported that the exec was on the short-list of candidates.
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