Former Autodesk CEO and Sun Microsystems executive Carol Bartz took over Yahoo's top spot in January 2009 -- and spent the year fixing the site up with new friends.
Her most high-profile coupling is a sprawling collaboration that makes Microsoft's Bing the search engine on Yahoo's homepage. Bartz spearheaded the deal as Yahoo's market share of search revenue dropped while newcomer Bing carved out a significant portion for itself.
Shouldering search onto Bing clears the way for Bartz to focus on the core Yahoo businesses she wants to strengthen: advertising, mail, and content sites like Yahoo's sports and finance properties. Yahoo also recently announced a deal with Twitter that will have "tweets" running across Web pages and through search results.
NEXT: Christina A. Gold
