The seventh annual conference of All Things Digital conference, which is also called as D7, was held at Carlsbad, California. Ms. Carol Bartz, the CEO of Yahoo Inc., was a participant in the conference who discussed about the future of her internet company.
Ms. Bartz was referring Yahoo as an integrated experience and said that it is a fact that Yahoo is one of the most visited websites in the world as it attracts more than 76 percent of the internet users to use one or more of its services. She said that she and her company are ready for a search deal but that it would require boatloads of money.
Ms. Kara Swisher, the host at the conference, asked Ms. Bartz to define Yahoo for which Ms. Bartz replied saying that Yahoo is a place where millions of people come and go to gather information about the people they like and various other things that they are interested in. She also said that it is happening so as people are able to find relevant and contextual information at Yahoo.
Ms. Bartz also mentioned in the conference that Yahoo has twice the number of email accounts than any of its competitors that is clear sign that Yahoo is still in the leading position with regard to emails and its usage. She also said that Yahoo has a global reach with a local feel. She said that they would improve it further more so that Yahoo will have more local and social features.
As the discussion went on, she said that she was initially not interested in becoming the CEO of Yahoo but until she saw the organizational chart of Yahoo. Mr. Jerry Yang, the founder of Yahoo, showed her this chart in a dinner in December. But after looking at the chart, she was clearly able to understand that it required a better management structure. So the discussions started from there on and that she became the CEO of Yahoo in January.
She said that her responsibility is leading to more innovations. Ms. Bartz said that Yahoo has an overall structure but simple things like reducing silos within the company and many other similar things need to be fixed.
Ms. Bartz also added saying that people trust Yahoo for its integration and timeliness. She also said that Yahoo drives more traffic to more sites than any other website and she said this very proudly. It just requires few modifications in order to make it better, she said.
Discussing about the future, she said that more concentration needs to be in the mobile sites. She added saying that emails and other sites need to be more user friendly, more social and easily customizable. They require a more modern user interface.
With regard to her opinion of a deal with Microsoft, she said that she is open for a deal but only if includes boatloads of money, right technology along with right data.