Activist: Yahoo!'s Bartz Provides Hope

Yahoo!(YHOO Quote) holds its annual meeting Thursday and, unlike the previous two meetings, I'm not attending this year. It's not that I think the company is doing such a great job; it's that I sold all my shares in Yahoo! last September after being dismayed by the poor decisions being made by the board and senior management despite the company's many assets.

I didn't hold out much hope that the board would make the necessary changes to get the company back on track, after listening to it justify turning down Microsoft's(MSFT Quote) buyout offer last year and ignoring the high number of protest votes cast against the re-election of several directors in the prior two years.

But I do have to give the Yahoo! board credit in one regard: It hired a great CEO in Carol Bartz, and I believe she is doing all the right things since she came aboard to turn this company around. If she is allowed to execute the turnaround path she's on (and, really, why wouldn't she be although I wouldn't put it past Yahoo!'s board based on its track record?), Yahoo!'s stock has a much better chance of outperforming Google's (GOOG Quote) in the next two years, even if Google's operating performance and search dominance continue apace.

With Bartz, what's not to like about her turnaround focus? I went back to the "Plan B" I put forward -- with the support of other retail investors -- to Yahoo!'s board in early 2007 and it appears that a majority of these changes have now happened or are in the process of taking place. It also was refreshing to hear Bartz say recently that she agreed with the "Peanut Butter Manifesto" -- an internal Yahoo! memo that went public in late 2006 that called for much greater focus and simplification of overlapping efforts at the company.