Michael Arrington interviews Carol Bartz | Hacker News Reader

Michael Arrington interviews Carol Bartz

techcrunch.com

11 pointswhyleyc13 comments

I don't get this. They open the conversation with "So how the fuck are you?" If you start that way, then closing with "Fuck off" does not seem unusual at all.

I think I like Carol Bartz - didn't know much about her before.

I liked that she admitted that Yahoo does not have any main focus, that they do a lot of things.

I may be a Google (AppEngine, old defunct search APIs, Reader, GMail, Blogger, Wave, etc.) and Amazon (love AWS and do most of my shopping on Amazon) fanboy, but the first thing I go to each morning on the web (after GMail) is my personal Yahoo page. I probably hit my personal page 10 times a day. Yahoo has a good product.

Wow, you made me look. I haven't been to my yahoo home page in years. I still check my email on there daily though.

I don't know, I'm not sure I understand what their future is.

Yes that sounded a bit strange. On the one side, she says that they have a focus, but then she can't tell what that focus is.

For this kind of interview you really need audio. Not hearing her inflection makes me wonder... why did Arrington/editor put her instruction to him in quotes?:

> CB: ... You are involved in a very tiny company.

> MA: Very tiny.

> CB: It probably takes some time just to convince yourself what to do. “So f*#k off!”

Anyway... enables him to provide a link-bait title to the "interview."

Yeah, I watched it on the stream, and it contextualizes a lot. The interview was not full-on jokey, but it was dry/acerbic and friendly. I would call it "playful sparring."

Interesting. To me MA's headline gave me the sense that Bartz must have signed off in disgust or something. But who can explain the motives of "stringers" (or whatever the title of blog employees who write headlines today).

Preceded by: "You run a very tiny company".

Amusing, but unfortunately that kind of tone from the CEO of a Yahoo is just descending to Arrington's level. Not constructive, nor would it really inspire me were I one of her employees.

Followed by: "I meant that one."

Given the line of questioning and the audience I don't really think the response was that horrible. It makes her seem a little more human, which played into a comment that Arrington made at the beginning of the interview as well. There was also her "What the fuck" to the audience when her mike stopped working almost immediately after sitting down. I think Arrington set the tone for the interview and she just went with it.

I actually found it rather refreshing that a CEO is speaking frankly. Regardless of whether I agree with her or not, at least I know she's speaking her mind rather than some made-up typical HR/Press-speak.

He was asking for it...

Most of this interview was pretty ho-hum but this was interesting:

CB: We know that men have banner blindness but will look at them in certain areas. Women will look at them in other areas. Men are odd.

I will definitely take this into account with my SEO projects

Maybe it was just said so she could end the interview with a Yahoo-ish exclamation mark...

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