Yahoo began distribute an iPad magazine

Yahoo has begun to distribute an iPad magazine that illuminates the Internet company's ambitions and the chronic hiccups that have thrown its fate into doubt.

The free magazine, called Livestand, has intriguing potential because its software can be customized to pull a deep pool of content from Yahoo's website and other participating publishers to cater to each user's interests.

But the magazine didn't arrive until Wednesday, well behind Yahoo Inc.'s own timetable for the product and 19 months after Apple Inc. began selling the iPad.

Since its launch last year, the iPad has thrust tablet computers onto the cutting edge of both technology and media.

Yahoo is counting on Livestand to keep its brand and services relevant as more people embrace the iPad and other mobile devices to consume digital content. The company also hopes that the magazine's customization tools make it easier to determine what each reader likes so advertisers can target their messages at people mostly likely to buy their products.

Yet Yahoo's delays in seizing such opportunities have been a recurring problem during the past decade. A combination of hubris, bureaucracy and poor decision-making caused Yahoo to react too slowly to threats posed by Google Inc. in Internet search and Facebook in social networking. That has left Yahoo badly weakened in two key markets.

Those setbacks are the main reasons Yahoo has been mired in a financial funk during a five-year stretch that saw the company go through three different CEOs who were unable to engineer a turnaround. Yahoo's board has been reviewing whether to sell all or parts of the company since firing Silicon Valley veteran Carol Bartz as CEO nearly two months ago.

If Yahoo remains independent, Livestand may become a key piece of Yahoo's latest comeback attempt.

It represents Yahoo's first major step toward building products primarily aimed at mobile devices before adapting them for desktop computers.

Besides drawing upon Yahoo's own content, Livestand chooses material from ABC, Forbes magazine, Parenting magazine and an assortment of publications devoted to sports and hobbies. Publishers will be offered a chance to sell subscriptions through Livestand next year.

Livestand "is sort of a re-imagining of what Yahoo can be," Blake Irving, Yahoo's chief product officer, told reporters after he unveiled the magazine at the company's Sunnyvale headquarters.

The magazine's debut came nearly nine months after Yahoo offered its first preview of Livestand. At that time, Yahoo said it hoped the magazine would be available in iPad's app store by June.

But Irving said Yahoo needed more time to ensure that the technology provided a smooth experience for readers, publishers and advertisers.

While Yahoo fine-tuned its product, several other digital magazine applications have attracted millions of users. One of the most popular, Flipboard, was hailed by Apple as its "app of the year" for 2010.

In a Wednesday interview, Irving scoffed at the notion that Yahoo's offering was coming too late.

Although the iPad has been around for a while, he said only a small fraction of the 700 million who regularly visit Yahoo's website currently own a tablet computer. That will change, though, during the next few years, if analysts are right in their predictions that tablets will become must-have devices in most households and offices.

Yahoo expects to have Livestand ready when tablets running on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 8 operating system are ready to be sold. Microsoft hasn't said when Windows 8 will ship, but most analysts believe it will happen during the next eight to 11 months.

Besides Livestand, Yahoo also introduced an iPad app for its email service and another app called IntoNow that recommends content based on what a user is watching on television. Yahoo got the IntoNow technology as part of an acquisition earlier this year.

Irving pointed to the new products as a sign that it's business as usual at Yahoo amid speculation that the company be sold or broken up.

Yahoo CEO Bartz fired over the phone, rocky run ends

Yahoo Inc Chairman Roy Bostock fired CEO Carol Bartz over the phone on Tuesday, ending a tumultuous tenure marked by stagnation and a rift with Chinese partner Alibaba.

Chief financial officer Tim Morse will step in as interim CEO, and the company will search for a permanent leader to spearhead a battle in online advertising and content with rivals Google Inc and Facebook.

Shares in the company jumped 6 percent. They are scarcely higher than where they were when Bartz first took the reins in January 2009 with hopes of reviving stalled growth and competing with up-and-coming rivals.

On Tuesday, her efforts were abruptly halted after Bostock called with the bad news.

The turn of events surprised few Wall Street observers who had tracked a rising torrent of criticism and watched revenue growth falter and sputter out.

Some analysts said Bartz's departure signalled the company had run out of options after failing to dominate the advertising and content markets and handing over its search operations to Microsoft Corp .

That partnership, under which Microsoft handles search for Yahoo's websites and keeps a portion of ad revenue, appears to favor the software giant at Yahoo's expense.

Yahoo said that a newly-formed executive leadership council would help Morse in managing day-to-day operations as well as supporting "a comprehensive strategic review" to position the company for future growth.

"It's hard to say what direction they are going to head. What is the next step for Yahoo? They went down the road of search, they went down the road of media, becoming a content company, they went down the road of advertising," said YCMNet Advisors CEO Michael Yoshikami.

"I'm not sure where they go right now. One wonders if this means that they might be ripe for a takeover."

Bostock voiced his public support in June for the CEO, a lightning rod for criticism from Wall Street, and known for her tough attitude and salty language.

Bartz's ouster capped a decade-long fall from grace for a company whose shares traded at more than $125 in January 2000 during the dotcom bubble -- but now languishes at about a 10th of that level.

Yahoo is still one of the most popular destinations on the Internet but faces increasing competition from social networking service Facebook and from Google.

Bartz arrived at Yahoo in January 2009 after a solid showing at software giant Autodesk with high hopes of turning around Yahoo, after co-founder Jerry Yang was widely thought to have botched a $47.5 billion proposed takeover by Microsoft, rebuffing that advance as too low. Yahoo is worth about $16 billion today, with much of that ascribed to its slice of Alibaba.

The Internet company reported a slight decline in net revenue in the second quarter, as efforts to restructure its sales force caused disruptions.

Research firm eMarketer has projected that Facebook would overtake Yahoo this year to collect the biggest slice of online display advertising dollars in the United States.

The management and board also came under fire after the company's handling of its relationship with China's Alibaba Group, in which Yahoo owns a stake of roughly 40 percent.

The rocky relationship between the companies came to a head in May when it was revealed that Alibaba had abruptly handed Alipay -- one of Alibaba's crown jewels -- to a company controlled by Alibaba founder Jack Ma, apparently without Yahoo's knowledge.

"They are going to need a vision of what they want to be in the future. And I don't think investors really understood what that clear vision was," Yoshikami said.