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.

I you are surprised Jerry Yang is stepping down from his CEO role at Yahoo, you probably still believe in the tooth fairy. Yang returned to the role to breathe new life into the company whose biggest problem is that of always being compared to Google. What you will not often read is that Yahoo is the second most trafficed site in America and number one in some nations like Taiwan. That is accomplishment any other internet property would kill for. What Yahoo has not done well as well as Google is search - both in raw search results and monetizing them. I think Yahoo could do better here, but not in the space of weeks or months. The job will take years. The company needs someone who can address this to grow, and anyone trying to do a quick fix for the quarterly return will fail. The company also needs to do a better job of monetizing it’s dizzying array of offerings and services. It’s always possible Yahoo could out earn Google even if they never catch them in search.

Was Yang or his predecessor the right person to task with correcting course for Yahoo? No! Nor is Jerry Yang really leaving, he’s just changing roles.  Changes need to go much deeper into the company, and the head of the company needs to define and better articulate the company’s mission. That’s something that has been lacking at Yahoo for a very long time.

Jerry Yang, after a tumultuous reign as the chief executive officer of Yahoo, the company he co-founded with David Filo, announced today that he is stepping down from the top slot. The news was first reported by Kara Swisher and later confirmed by Yahoo in a press release. He is going to make way for someone else, but will stay on the board of Yahoo and will be known as Chief Yahoo. (GigaOm)