The months separating September 2011 and July 2012 were not good ones for the leadership of Yahoo Inc., to put it mildly.
The company began that period by firing CEO Carol Bartz, whose tenure is best remembered for the time she told a tech journalist to "f*** off" at a live event; subsequently, the board of directors brought in two other CEOs, Scott Thompson and Ross Levinsohn, whose combined tenures lasted a paltry seven months. With stock prices hovering around $12, down significantly from the $30 price that had been the company's norm just a few years prior, it became abundantly clear that Yahoo was in sore need of quality leadership.