????“我們始終認為，我們不可能找到比卡羅爾更好的首席執行官了。”

????上述評價出自卡羅爾?巴茨昔日執掌的一家公司的董事會成員之口。也許你猜得到，這家公司肯定不是雅虎（Yahoo），因為該公司董事會剛剛在上周二突然解雇了巴茨。說這話的是數字化設計技術公司歐特克（Autodesk）的人。2004年，G?帕斯卡爾?扎卡里曾在為巴茨寫的小傳里指出，在巴茨的領導下，歐特克的經營狀況出現了明顯好轉，一年內，其股票升了5倍。盡管花費了幾年的時間，而且其間亦不斷受挫，但這一切最終都得到了回報。

????至于雅虎，現在該說的都說了，該做的也都做了，雅虎董事會的成員們最終可能不得不承認這名歐特克董事的觀點：也許對于雅虎而言，不可能再找到比卡羅爾?巴茨更好的首席執行官了。言外之意是，雅虎的經營狀況根本就不可能出現逆轉。罷免巴茨之后，董事會也提出了幾名候選人來接替她，但在支持工程師、鼓勵創新、以及引領雅虎重返互聯網業核心方面，他們無一令人信服能勝過巴茨。

????雅虎股東們也普遍持相近的觀點。上周三，雅虎股票開盤時曾升至13.93美元之高，比上周二的收盤價高出8%，但是隨即就慢慢降至13.30美元。

????巴茨在雅虎的業績毀譽參半，并逐漸下滑，最終慘遭罷免。2009年1月，巴茨加盟雅虎，擔任首席執行官。彼時，雅虎股票的交易價在12美元/股左右，比其今天的水平略低。此后，雅虎股票的市場表現遠遠落后于同行。巴茨執掌雅虎期間，公司的納斯達克（Nasdaq）指數上升了61%，而谷歌公司（Google）和亞馬遜公司（Amazon）則分別增長了70%和292%。

????更糟的是，巴茨加入雅虎時，公司董事會承諾，如果她能夠讓公司的股票價格回升到25美元/股（巴茨的一位前任特里?塞米爾在6年內共從雅虎領取薪酬5.7億美元）的話，4年內她將總共賺得1.87億美元。2009年，據美聯社（AP）報道，在標準普爾指數覆蓋的500家公司的領導人中，巴茨是收入最高的首席執行官，年收入4,720萬美元。一年后，其薪水被削減了75%。

????正如麥奎爾?海爾夫特所言，巴茨上任伊始，采取了一些大膽舉措，其中包括關閉過時的GeoCities站點，停止與微軟（Microsoft）共同開發搜索引擎的合作關系，但這些對于改變公司的經營狀況均收效甚微。很快，工程人才開始再次外流。今夏，巴茨在雅虎員工中的支持率由上任之初的90%下降到了24%。而且，雅虎還與馬云為爭奪支付寶（AliPay）而發生了一場聲名狼藉的“激戰”。除此慘痛失敗之外，雅虎今年第二季度的營業額亦未實現預期。有些分析師認為，巴茨被炒意味著，公司第三季度財務數字依然慘不忍睹。

????盡管人們對巴茨在雅虎任職期間的表現進行了長篇累牘的分析，但卻普遍忽視了一點，那就是，在股東的眼里，她在雅虎其實已經做到了極致。一如《大西洋月刊》（Atlantic）的阿萊克西斯?馬德里加爾所言，巴茨“已經盡了自己的本分，盡力從一棵枯萎將死的搖錢樹上多榨取一點錢。”巴茨上任后的10個季度里，與其上任之前的10個季度相比，雅虎的凈收入增長了52%。

????2011年，互聯網行業其實只有兩類公司。一類是精悍的初創公司，推動其前進的是一群極具創新精神的工程師，其愿景輕易成功或失敗的比例各占一半。另一類是典型的大公司，這些公司沿用的仍是數年前甚至幾十年前確立的服務大雜燴模式。

????雅虎明顯屬于后者。它永遠也無法通過創新走出困境；它再也不會像從前那樣，建立供其他公司遵循的業界標準；過去它曾試圖將圖片分享網站Flickr和網站收藏共享服務delicio.us等名副其實地樹立了創新標準的公司收之麾下，但最終均以失敗收場。如今，雅虎仍然提供利潤豐厚的廣告內容，它只需要繼續做好這件事就行了。它再也無法重現1999年的光輝歲月，要阻止谷歌和Facebook從大型廣告客戶手中搶走大量生意，難如登天。

????趕走巴茨之后，雅虎董事會有幾個選擇：從公司內部或者外部聘任一名新首席執行官，賣掉其亞洲資產，將部分收益分配給股東，或者將公司整個賣給私募機構或者另一家媒體公司。上述選擇中有些聽起來動靜夠大，但無論怎樣，也無法改變現實：雅虎在逐漸衰亡，但在此前數年內，它仍然會持續贏利。這得歸功于巴茨。

????盡管巴茨也犯下了不少過失，但沒有她，從長遠角度看，雅虎未來不可能贏利。而從另一方面看，巴茨離開了雅虎也許反而會過得更好，當然這要取決于她的新工作。

????譯者：大海

????"We always concluded we couldn't find anyone better than Carol."

????That comment came from a board director of a company helmed by Carol Bartz. As you can imagine, the company wasn't Yahoo (YHOO) -- its board unceremoniously fired Bartz on Tuesday -- but Autodesk (ADSK). As a profile of Bartz by G. Pascal Zachary pointed out in 2004, Autodesk saw its stock rise fivefold in one year, thanks to Bartz' effort to turn the company around. That turnaround involved several years and multiple setbacks, but the payoff was well worth the wait.

????As for Yahoo, when all is said and done, its own board members might end up echoing the sentiment of that Autodesk director: maybe there wasn't a better CEO for Yahoo than Carol Bartz. Which is to say that Yahoo simply can't be turned around. A few names have been offered as replacements for Bartz, and none instill confidence that they'll be able to support engineers, foster innovation and move Yahoo back to the center of the web any better than Bartz did.

????You can see that sentiment sinking into the mindset of Yahoo shareholders. The stock initially rose as high as $13.93 Wednesday, or 8% above Tuesday's close, but drifted down to $13.30 as the day wore on.

????Bartz's track record at Yahoo is mixed, and grew increasingly spotty toward the end. When Bartz joined Yahoo as CEO in January 2009, the stock was trading around $12 a share, slightly below its level today. Yahoo has severely underperformed its peers since then. The Nasdaq is up 61% during the Bartz era, while Google (GOOG) is up 70% and Amazon (AMZN) is up 292%.

????Making matters worse, Bartz received a pay package that promised her $187 million over four years, provided she could revive Yahoo's stock price back to $25 a share (a predecessor, Terry Semel, earned $570 million over six years). In 2009, the AP calculated, she was the highest paid CEO among leaders of S&P 500 companies, receiving $47.2 million. A year later, she took a 75% pay cut.

????As Miguel Helft pointed out, Bartz's early bold moves -- shutting down the archaic GeoCities sites and the search partnership with Microsoft (MSFT) -- did little to turn things around. Soon, engineering talent was streaming out the doors again. Bartz's approval ratings among her employees slid from 90% after her arrival to 24% this summer. And if the ugly fight with Jack Ma over AliPay wasn't a bad enough failure, Yahoo's revenue disappointed in the second quarter of 2011. Some analysts took the firing of Bartz as a sign that the third quarter's numbers would be just as bleak.

????But overlooked in many of the post-mortems of Bartz's tenure at Yahoo is that, from a shareholder's perspective, she accomplished as much as anyone could have at Yahoo. As the Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal said, Bartz "milked money from a dying cash cow, like she was supposed to do," increasing Yahoo's net income by 52% in the last 10 quarters over the same period before her arrival.

????In 2011, there are really two types of companies in the web industry. One type is the lean startup, driven by a core group of creative engineers with a vision that could just as easily succeed as fail. The other is typically a larger company maintaining a patchwork of services designed years, perhaps decades, ago.

????Yahoo is clearly in the latter camp. It's never going to innovate its way out of its quagmire, it won't ever again set a standard for others to follow, and its past attempts to buy companies that did set an innovative standard -- like Flickr and delicious -- ended badly. Yahoo curates profitable ad content, and that's all it needs to do. It will never return to its glory days of 1999, it will be hard enough to keep Google and Facebook from stealing ad dollars from big advertisers.

????After Bartz, Yahoo's board has several options -- hiring a CEO from inside or outside the company, selling off Asian assets and distributing some gains to shareholders or selling the whole company to private equity firm or another media company. And as dramatic as some of these sound, they won't change the reality that Yahoo is dying very slowly, but it has years of profitable growth ahead of it. Which is what Bartz accomplished.

????For all Bartz's flaws, Yahoo is unlikely to be better off in the long run without her. Depending on where she lands in her next job, Bartz may be a lot better off without Yahoo.