14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo's financial results for the second quarter came in earlier and while they were slightly above experts' expectations the Internet giant saw a big dip in revenue, declining 13 percent. However, CEO Carol Bartz was satisfied with the results, considering that they couldn't have been much better in this economic environment. Bartz has only been with Yahoo for a little over six months and is leading the company through some troubled times.
“I’m pleased with our results this past quarter. We established a clear, simple vision to be the center of people’s lives online, and we’re backing that vision with important initiatives to create ‘wow’ experiences for our users,” Bartz said. “We’re confident that this vision will put us on the right path to growth and profitability long term. Our new homepage is a perfect example of our efforts to create innovative products aimed at increasing user engagement while offering the most compelling advertising proposition in the industry.”
In a conference call after releasing the results Bartz was upbeat about the postings but was cautions in predicting the future trends in the advertising segment and the economy as a whole, saying that, while there was less fear in the market and it could be a sign that the decline had bottomed out, there was too much conflicting information to provide a definite answer. Advertising revenue was down for the company, in tune with most of its competitors. Still the CEO believes that some of Yahoo's ads can be annoying and has vouched to remove them in Yahoo Mail.
But the question on everyone’s lips was about the renewed rumors of a Microsoft deal, which would have Yahoo sell its search and advertising businesses to the Redmond giant. Bartz declined to comment on that but she did have much kinder words about Microsoft's latest search engine Bing, saying it was a solid product that spurred actual innovation in the search sector but that it was too early to tell if it was going to be a success. That is a significant change of tone from previous comments and may be seen as a sign of warming relations between the two companies.