Best of luck to Yahoo’s new CEO, Carol Bartz.  She’s got quite a history of accomplishment, and not many with her track record would be interested in the minefield that surely awaits her at Yahoo.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO), a leading global brand and one of the world’s most trafficked Internet destinations, announced today that Carol Bartz, a veteran technology executive who was most recently Executive Chairman of Autodesk (NASDAQ: ADSK), has been named Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors, effective immediately.

Prior to becoming Executive Chairman of Autodesk in 2006, Bartz, 60, led Autodesk as CEO for 14 years, transforming the company into a leader in computer-aided design software. During her tenure as CEO, revenues increased from less than $300 million to more than $1.5 billion, and the company’s share price increased nearly ten-fold.

In addition to turning around Autodesk, Bartz’s extensive executive experience includes hands-on responsibility for leading global operations, engineering, sales and marketing organizations for large technology and engineering companies including Sun Microsystems, Digital Equipment Corporation and 3M. (Yahoo Press Release)

If Yahoo were in a more mature business, no one would be complaining about their lack of direction. Unfortunately for it’s past CEO’s, investors wanted a Yahoo that performs like a Google. The problem with that there is only one Google and to outdo them, you have to do something very different instead  of all the “me too” that the big fund managers have demanded of the past CEO’s.

If allowed the latitude to take Yahoo in the direction it needs to go, Ms Bartz still has to be able to steer the good ship Yahoo. Unfortately it’s a leaky ship without a rudder. To the plus side, it’s the #2 web destination in the world, has a large stable of active user communities, and lost of revenue. What it has always lacked is cohesive direction. It’s fine tofocus on  fixing leaks, but the ship also to have direction if it’s going anywhere.  Hopefully Carol Bartz will give the company direction and manage to navigate the minefiled long enough to gain the confidence of the big investors.