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Carol Bartz isn't saying a whole lot about Yahoo! Inc.'s (NASDAQ:YHOO) dealmaking future, but what she has said makes us like her more and more.
We were quite concerned that we'd have to listen to another few months of Yahoo! execs saying "We'd be willing to do a deal with Microsoft" and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer floating similar comments. The cat-and-mouse game that ensued in the months before Bartz arrived was a bunch of hot air, judging from the lack of any results on the deal front. Things grew particularly worrisome last week, when Ballmer said Microsoft was open to some kind of search pact with Yahoo!. We started pulling our hair out when Yahoo! chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen came right back and said his company "wasn't opposed" to a search deal with Microsoft.
But a day later, Yahoo! put out the word that Jorgensen was leaving the company,
and we wondered if maybe now that Bartz was in charge, things might be
different. Did she give Jorgensen the boot because of his comment? Tuesday, Bartz came right out and said it: If an agreement is struck
with Microsoft, we won't be hearing about it in public.
At an investor conference in San Francisco, the new Yahoo! CEO said she had recently said as much to Ballmer. "I am not going to negotiate with my 55,000 favorite friends," Bartz said, referring to Microsoft's employees. "This is what I told him. Until then, there is no comment on it." Good news indeed, but it doesn't improve the odds that a search deal is going to get done. Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt, who spoke at the same conference, is acutely aware of the difficulty of sealing a search agreement with Yahoo!. Google's attempt to do so last year was blocked by antitrust concerns. "We wish them the best of luck," he told conference attendees. - Olaf de Senerpont Domis CategoriesComments Deal Video
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