• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, September 7, 2011

Two-and-a-half years into her four-year contract, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz got fired. There are plenty of reasons why it happened -- from a decline in search and display advertising revenue to falling stock prices to the Alibaba fiasco that left Yahoo lacking a strong presence in Asia.

Let's not forget how the social media and mobile boats sailed a little too late for Yahoo. For years, the Sunnyvale, Calif. company touted its expertise in mobile search and advertising, but it clearly got broadsided by the masses before letting out the sails and allowing the trends to carry it through.

And the stock took a nosedive, too. But Yahoo not meeting its financial stock targets remains a small part. There are reports that Chairman Roy Bostock got more involved in daily details, and tensions increased between Jerry Yang and Bartz.

Speculation continues to grow over the next step for Yahoo now that Bartz is gone. Needham & Co. Analyst Laura Martin thinks AOL could try to acquire Yahoo, and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and Huffington Post Editor in Chief Arianna Huffington would make a likely duo to run the company. "Strategically, we believe that Yahoo is worth more with AOL's traffic added to their own," Martin wrote in a research note published Wednesday. "Armstrong has long talked about trying to combine YHOO with AOL. Now he may get the chance."

If Bartz couldn't turn around Yahoo, then who can? Martin wrote that history shows Internet "fallen angels" don't have a strong turnaround track record. Bartz's failure raises the stakes that perhaps it simply can't be done by anyone other than Apple's Steve Jobs.

Whatever happens, it can't be any worse than things are today, according to Rob Griffin, EVP and global director of product development at Havas Digital. At the end of the day, Yahoo sits on a sizable audience that will continue to attract advertisers, he said.

While the Yahoo board named CFO Tim Morse as Interim CEO, Trip Chowdhry, managing director at Global Equities Research, believes both should have been fired together. He calls them both "completely clueless" -- both damaged Yahoo's business. and repairing it will prove extremely difficult. Chowdhry explains that both lack the ability to "think big, bold and execute fast."

By the way, before joining Yahoo, Morse served as senior vice president and CFO of Altera, a semiconductor company specializing in programmable logic devices for communications, industrial, and consumer applications. He also held positions at General Electric.

So the search for a CEO who can turn around Yahoo begins. Sorry, guys -- Jobs retired.