Yahoo board fires chief executive Carol Bartz

Carol Bartz has been fired as chief executive of Yahoo less than three years after taking charge of the ailing search company.

Bartz will be replaced in the interim by chief financial officer Tim Morse while the company searches for a permanent replacement.

Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock thanked Bartz for her time at the company, but the shock firing suggests that the board was unhappy with her work at trying to reverse the company's decline.

"On behalf of the entire board, I want to thank Carol for her service to Yahoo during a critical time of transition in the company's history, and against a very challenging macro-economic backdrop," he said.

Bostock added that the board is confident that the firm can continue to remain relevant in the increasingly competitive online market.

"The board sees enormous growth opportunities on which Yahoo can capitalise, and our primary objective is to leverage the company's leadership and current business assets and platforms to execute against these opportunities," he said.

"We have talented teams and tremendous resources behind them, and intend to return the company to a path of robust growth and industry-leading innovation."

The move marks an end to Bartz's ambitious campaign to turn Yahoo's fortunes around having taken over as chief executive from Jerry Yang in 2009.

Bartz oversaw efforts to rebuild Yahoo's business model around search advertising, and was behind the partnership with Microsoft that saw Yahoo's search service replaced with the Bing engine.

The move brought mixed results for Yahoo and led to speculation of a possible buyout in 2010

Since then, the company has continued its rebuilding efforts with product and service spin offs and advertising acquisitions.

Bartz also gained notoriety for her strong and occasionally abrasive management style. Shortly after taking over at Yahoo, she addressed a problem with news leaks by threatening to "dropkick to f***ing Mars" any employee caught leaking information.

Industry analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group suggested that Bartz's undoing was not her attitude or strategy, but her background.

Enderle told V3 that Bartz simply did not have the necessary experience to oversee Yahoo's transformation to a content and advertising-based model.

"It took a while for the board to realise that it made a mistake, but the fact was that Bartz had the wrong skill set for Yahoo," he said.

"Her skill set did not match the business Yahoo was in. The company needs someone who has experience with an internet property."