Bartz on Yahoo! Minus Search

Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz stopped limping around her office long enough (she had replacement knee surgery three weeks ago) to give a long interview to The New York Times, in which she discussed the deal with Microsoft and her company’s future away from the search business.

Bartz told the Times Yahoo! got out of the search business because it could no longer keep up with the investments Google and Microsoft were making in the sector, adding that the influx of resources from Microsoft would be used to strengthen Yahoo!’s display-ad, content and mobile-services technology.

Highlights of Bartz’s question-and-answer session with the Times:

My first reaction when I got here was that I wouldn’t even do a search deal, until I looked at our expense structure and our actual options and looked at what our prime job was, which is to grow audience.

On her statement at an industry conference that Microsoft would have to fork over “boatloads of cash” for Yahoo!’s search business:

I made a mistake. I was never interested in doing it for upfront money. That doesn’t help me operate a business.

On her dealings with Microsoft president Steve Ballmer:

He called my first day. I told him: “Go away. I haven’t even found the bathroom.”

On Yahoo!’s investments in technology:

We are actually behind in investing. We should have invested more.

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