SEOYahoo’s Bartz: ‘I’m here to stay. Do I look like a wimp?’

Yahoo's Bartz: 'I'm here to stay. Do I look like a wimp?'

One day after Yahoo reported its Q3 earnings and Yahoo’s board unofficially committed to stick with Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz for the remainder of her contract, Bartz was interviewed by Fox Business.

Among the highlights (via The Hill):

  • Negative headlines: “If I am being shown the door, I am coming in the door. Watch what we are doing. Check back in. I’m here to stay. Do I look like a wimp?”
  • Yahoo/Bing Alliance: “We spent about six to seven months getting that deal together and approval from the government and exactly a year later we have gone live with using Bing as our back end and using our own innovation on the front end. It’s the concept of two airlines flying a Boeing plane, the experience is much different. We are both flying the Boeing plane; the Bing back end results but we are delivering a fantastic new experience. The reason it’s working is because we are investing together to make a great marketplace for the advertisers. We told our shareholders yesterday it is on schedule for profitability. Too early for more numbers but it turned out to be a very important and wise decision for the company.”
  • AOL/News Corporation takeover rumors: “I can’t answer that question. It’s not appropriate for someone in my seat to speculate.”
  • First year as CEO: “It has been a fun year. But pressure it has been. The positive side is that you are working with such great people to affect change. But I came to Yahoo a year and half ago and I am more excited than the day I walked in the door.
  • Hiring a second in command: “I run the company with a team. It’s not the number one running the company, it wouldn’t be the number two running the company. There isn’t a need for a number two. There is a need for great talent up and down the company and that’s what we focus on.”
  • Companies she admires: “I admire Facebook, Google, Intel, Cisco. There’s a lot of different ways to be successful, and success has to be won over a longer period of time than one idea or one concept. We are 15 years old in the Internet space that seems very old and we have evolved. Most of the folks who came into the Internet with us aren’t here anymore. I admire all of these companies because they have done different things really well. What’s important for all of us is to stick to what we do well.”
  • She’s impossible to work with: “When you bring a new coach in there is going to be change. And when you bring a new coach in, the coach has to put their team together. Change happens when there is new management and it’s refreshing for all of us. 15,000 employees, three people left. That’s OK.” [Well, if you don’t count all these people, plus Yahoo’s head of mobile, who just left.]
  • Apps are a priority for Yahoo: “We want our users to find us on any size screen.”
  • Alibaba: “The company five years ago had some trouble in China and made such a wise decision to move the business out of China and not operate in China. We partnered up with a fantastic entrepreneur Jack Ma. Five years later everybody is salivating because it was such good decision and such a good investment. So we continue to watch this investment and what’s best for the shareholders.”
  • Critiques of Yahoo’s “unimpressive” $1.6 billion revenue: “Our profit has gone up 80 percent year over year. We are back to growing the business; the business hasn’t grown really in about six years and we are turning that around. Most importantly we have a vision. We know what to do for our customers and our advertisers. We are getting our products modern, exciting, we are attracting new users every month.”
  • Yahoo’s future: “We have a breadth and depth of content that is different than a social site and different than a search site. We have to do our job, which is fantastic information for people. Yahoo has such a great future. When you serve 600 million people around the globe and they come to look at the wonderful content we have, the wonderful mail system, they vote with their fingertips. They know what we are. I couldn’t be more proud of this company.”

You can find the video Fox Business aired here.

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