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Yahoo Names New CEO: Carol Bartz From Autodesk

Bartz served as the CEO of Autodesk, a maker of CAD (computer-aided design) software, from 1992 to 2006, and is also a member of the boards at Cisco and Intel.

First reaction: what exactly does Autodesk have to do with a consumer-focused Internet company like Yahoo? Bartz certainly sounds like she has a long history of running a big company – Autodesk has more than 7,000 employees and $2 billion in annual revenue – but what expertise and vision does she have that’s relevant to one of the world’s biggest Web companies, in desperate need of re-inventing itself?

The appointment of Bartz has been rumored since last week, when Kara Swisher reported that the exec was on the short-list of candidates.