Half the battle is understanding...

Implications: 1) At least there is an understanding that a shake up is necessary, that is half the battle... but what is going to change is not yet unfolded.

2) An opportunity is out there waiting for  a systems solution.

Analysis: Still truly untested and unknown in this capacity... will she have the operational and technical knowledge to know when her underlings are helping or hurting? Competent leadership is good, and credibility among the analysts is fine, but what Yahoo! seems to need is a good dose of outside the box leadership and some inspired direction from fresh-thinking executives who aren't afraid to try new things.

Let's remember... the door was opened for Google many years ago when Yahoo! contracted for them to provide their search algorithms.

Yahoo! is rolling out new software and process for its 'Search Marketing' advertising clients, where Google has had a very robust system in place for many months, including web page analytic to help the pinpoint accuracy of target marketing.

One major opportunity out there for Yahoo! to grab advertisers, is to provide extreme clear transparency for the search marketing placement and clicks. The best of breed systems provided by the large search engines and designed with the clients requirements will surely lift interest.

Most online advertising campaigns (and conversely the budgets) are tightly coupled to the immediate performance results, versus a throw out an ad a hope for response weeks later.