Yahoo loses a director, keeps a fan

September 29, 2009 12:48am

Yahoo director Maggie Wilderotter, a onetime Microsoft strategy executive, will leave the company’s board at the end of the year, Yahoo said in an SEC filing late Friday.

Yahoo said Ms Wilderotter, whose day job is in Connecticut as CEO of telecommunications provider Frontier Communications, wanted more time to devote to other pursuits and didn’t leave as the result of any disagreement.

In an email exchange, Ms. Wilderotter remained supportive of CEO Carl Bartz, who struck a controversial deal to outsource Yahoo’s search mechanics to Microsoft.

“I think Carol is terrific,” she wrote to me. “The company is in good hands.”

Frontier’s Web page, incidentally, still offers search that is “powered by Yahoo search.” Which does sound better than “powered by Yahoo search, which is in turn powered by Microsoft’s Bing search.”