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How will it fare after the messy sacking of Carol Bartz, Alasdair Reid asks
It is sometimes said, often with more than a little justification, that the online media sector likes (very much to its disadvantage) to live in an "eternal present"- and has little sense of any form of history.
If there's a major exception to this, however, it has to be Yahoo!, which in recent times has always been judged against what it once was, what it could and should have become - and the mistakes it has deemed to have made or is continuing to make or is likely to make in the future.
In such a context, its most recent calamity could be regarded as unexceptional. Carol Bartz was brought in as its chief executive to transform the company; she failed (in raw financial terms, at least); and, therefore, she was invited to pursue alternative career options. So it goes, in that eternal departure lounge known as the C-suite.
In some respects, though, this represents a new nadir. According to widespread reports, on 6 September, during a routine telephone conversation with her chairman, Roy Bostock, he began woodenly reading a prepared statement to the effect that he was firing her.
Bostock appeared not to have the courage or the decency to face her - and the farce deepened and darkened when he revealed that lawyers were on their way to make her sign resignation documents on his terms. Her response was to go into temporary hiding. The next...