MediaFile

Yahoo confirmed news of a departure tri-fecta, in which Hilary Schneider, EVP of the  Americas, David Ko, SVP Audience, Mobile and Local, North America, and Jimmy Pitaro, VP Media, all jumped ship.

In addition to telling the public, Yahoo also decided it was time to communicate with its staff (most of whom learned about the departures from the AllThingsD blog post that broke the news). Chief executive Carol Bartz and Schneider both sent out internal memos to the troops on Thursday afternoon, copies of which were obtained by Reuters.

The first email, from the desk of Carol Bartz:

Carol from the foxhole here. No, actually I’m in Atlanta to give a speech later tonight, and doing some client meetings.

But I’m sure you’ve seen the rumors about Hilary Schneider, David Ko, and Jimmy Pitaro leaving. Yes, they’re leaving, but each for different reasons that suit their life – and Hilary will send a separate note to her team with more about the Americas org. later today.

After nearly four years with Yahoo!, Hilary has decided to move on to the next phase in her career. Hilary has played a major role at Yahoo! in driving our strategies for content, online advertising and more. I want to thank her for her contributions over the years, and wish her the best as she moves on.

You might think from listening to most of the world’s iPhone, iPad, i-everthingelse enthusiasts that Steve Jobs and Apple can do no wrong, but not everybody is in agreement. 

In a bout of clear anti-i sentiment, Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo, scorned the notion that her company should follow in Apple’s footsteps with a service similar to iAd, the mobile advertising platform Apple unveiled this year. 

 ”That’s going to fall apart for them,” Bartz said in an meeting with Reuters reporters Wednesday. 
She suggested that advertisers will balk on Apple’s efforts to exert full Jobsean control over the ads. She kindly conceded that Apple’s effort is “ok for experimentation.” 

Celebrity deaths are big news. But nothing warms a media executive’s heart more than a good celebrity sex scandal.

“God bless Tiger. This week we got a huge uplift.” Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz told a crowd of investors in New York on Tuesday at the UBS Media and Communications Conference.

Reuters

Bartz noted that the Tiger Woods story has filtered through all of Yahoo’s key online properties, from front page news to websites dedicated to sports and gossip.

A string of Yahoo sales, engineering and product executives took the stage on Wednesday in the company's first full-day briefing with analysts since May 2006, all with a mantra that came down from on high: "Today is the beginning of a journey back to respect," said CEO Carol Bartz.

With page views increasing, Carl Icahn having drawn in his horns, and the company extending a deadline for finalizing a search agreement with Microsoft, the time was right for a love-in.

Finance Chief Tim Morse said Yahoo expects to achieve operating margins between 15 percent and 20 percent by 2012. After the third quarter's "pathetic" 6 percent, shareholders would certainly consider that a more respectful performance.

In politics, bashing the so-called “coastal elitists” is a time-honored tradition.

Now the ritual has spread to the Internet business.

In a briefing with reporters on Tuesday, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz lambasted the company’s critics, whom she suggested are out of touch with most of America.

“When you get out of New York City and Silicon Valley everybody loves Yahoo,” said Bartz, citing the positive feedback she gets from regular folks on her many travels (she cited interactions with ebullient passport control officials and people in her former home state of Wisconsin).

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was right by the Reuters office this morning, ringing the morning bell at Nasdaq on 43rd Street and Broadway, so I ran down to catch a glimpse and lob a few questions at her. With all the buzz about Yahoo’s new marketing campaign, which is set to be unveiled tomorrow, I asked Bartz if she was excited.

“Excited? I’m so excited about it, I could do a Yahoo yodel,” she said. But then, she didn’t oblige. Bartz did say New Yorkers will see splashy Yahoo signs and other gimmicks over the next few days. But it’s not just New York.

The campaign, which the New York Times says is backed by a $100 million budget, will be launched all over the world, Bartz said. We’ll have more on Tuesday, when Yahoo executives tell reporters what they are up to. Until then, here’s a sneak peak courtesy of The Wall Street Journal, which says the campaign tagline is “It’s You!”.

Ah, the morning after.

Microsoft and Yahoo have finally come to an understanding, putting to rest what seemed like an endless back-and-forth (As Barry Diller said yesterday,  “We’re not going to have to talk about whether or not it’s going to happen anymore).

In case you were at the beach, on the golf course, riding your bike, or hiding out in a cave yesterday, here are the very basics: It’s a 10-year Web search deal; doesn’t include display; Microsoft will the guarantee revenue per search for the first 18 months; Yahoo expects deal to boost income by $500 million and save about $200 million in capex; Microsoft will pay traffic acquisition at an initial rate of 88 percent; Yahoo will act as the global sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers; etc. etc.

Just about everyone has weighed in on the deal, and more analysis is certain to come in the days ahead. In the meantime, here’s what we see as a few key questions about the deal.

By now, reporters and analysts who cover Yahoo have come to expect (and dare I say, delight in) CEO Carol Bartz’s colorful figures of speech and the occasional f-bomb drop during conference calls.

So Bartz’s tame delivery of Yahoo’s second-quarter earnings on Tuesday was a bit of a surprise. We know the 60-year-old is recovering from knee surgery, but was this even the same Bartz? The one who threatened to “dropkick to f–king Mars” employees who leak information to reporters? Or the one who asked the press to give Yahoo some “friggin’ breathing room” as the company figured out its next move? (Here’s a list of Bartz’s greatest hits).

By comparison, Tuesday afternoon was a bore, as Bartz stuck to a straight script. What’s more, she actually went so far as to compliment Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine that’s been pulling market share from competitors.

Steve Ballmer knows how to pack a house.

Stanford University’s Memorial Hall was filled to its almost 2,000 capacity on Wednesday, as the voluble Microsoft CEO took the stage.

For the MBAs and engineering students who showed up, the event was a chance to get inspiration from the chief of one of the world’s most powerful corporations (and from someone who dropped out of Stanford Business School to join Microsoft). The press in attendance was mainly interested in comments Ballmer might make about Yahoo.

Indeed, with Microsoft and Yahoo reportedly in talks about a search partnership, speculation has risen in the blogosphere that Ballmer and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz would have a sit-down during his swing through the Bay Area.

The most notable incident in Yahoo’s first-quarter earnings conference call Tuesday came in the closing minutes.

That’s when CEO Carol Bartz hit a crowd of analysts with an F-bomb, instantly livening up a call which had until then focused on the company’s inline financial results.

Bartz, who has already earned a reputation as a no-nonsense leader with a blunt communications style, let the expletive fly while describing how her recent restructuring efforts will improve the inefficiencies that have long plagued Yahoo.