I fail to see the wow. The primary change on the home page is a customizable rail/column that allows the consumer to add his or her favorite pages/sites/social networks to provide a one-stop panoramic snapshot of everything that’s important in one’s world. The truth is, customization works best if those sites you want to add are either Yahoo properties or those (such as All Things Digital) who have formatted their content for customizable viewing. The “apps,” as they are called, are in three flavors: Yahoo sites, partner sites (or perhaps those who have worked to make their content suited for preview) and your favorites. A box allows individuals to add their favorites to the front page, but adding my blog and Twitter resulted in a major fail as these personalized add-ons failed to load previews. Adding Facebook, which looks to be pre-programmed, kept giving me a message to log in, but even after logging in, it didn’t work. Makes me wonder if others are having the same issue.

Beyond the customizable issues, why can’t the search box at the top of the page be customized so I can focus on the categories I search most: videos, blogs, news. I’d like to move image search off the main window and add one of my own preferences. And what’s with that little box at the top next to my name that asks for my status? Who sees that, and how do I see others in my network? And, lastly, if Bartz says that video is important to Yahoo, why isn’t there a single video window on the new homepage?

There’s wow and then there’s WOW. In the case of Yahoo’s new homepage, I think it falls short of both.

One key point made in the report was Microsoft’s need to take advantage of whatever momentum it was able to build based on its extensive and expensive ad campaign. The need to continue to add new features and functions that afford greater utility was essential to prove it was a serious, long-term contender, albeit a bit tardy. Based on such features as “quick add” to Hotmail, it may be a sign that Bing may have the chops to send a scare into its competitors.

“Quick add” offers the ability to seamlessly add the results of a search query to an email message. I cannot find such a feature in any of the competitors. I opened a new mail message in Hotmail, went to the Bing search pane, typed in “Ryan Howard” and was then offered text, images or video. I selected video and with one click could add the video to my email. Very slick.

I am not alone in my feeling about Bing; The New York Times’ David Pogue who says that in many ways Bing is better than Google. He was particularly taken with Bing’s ability to provide relevant structured data for results in Bing’s target categories: travel, shopping, health and local. All of its research and focused planning may have paid off for Microsoft in developing a winning game plan for the consumer search market.

Cool features and funny (depending on your POV) TV ads (here’s one), are fine, but what can we expect in terms of results? The thinking here is that, based on its current momentum and ability to add utility, Bing could gain as much as five share points by the end of the year. Five points keeps Bing third among the big players, but it would impress consumers, the (ever doubtful) cognoscenti and advertisers. Count Google and Yahoo! among those who should be concerned (if they aren’t already).

In the next week, we will publish, for Gartner’s media clients, a report that features our take on Bing, its mission and chances for success. But before that, a few points to consider:

With so much riding on Bing, why is Microsoft offering a six day gap between announcement and launch? Such a lag can only lead to the spread of misinformation and a potential flow of negative comments across the vast social media grid prior to launch. Microsoft does not go into this exercise with a lot of support among influencers given its past efforts in the search space. In the recent past, Google has announced major upgrades in real time and Apple, the master cybershowman, rarely leaves a major lag between announcement and delivery.

And why announce Bing at a conference geared for the cognoscenti? Ultimately, it is the consumer who decides, so why not a more public launch in a more fan-friendly venue? And while there may be no control over timing, a June launch is past the window of quality TV ad buys with May sweeps over and out. Summer TV viewing consists of reruns and lesser fare which doesn’t exactly lead to an engaged audience.

A few things to ponder. Stayed tuned for our more in-depth report.

The new structure speaks to Bartz’s former role as head of Autodesk, a software publisher, and her work at Sun Microsystems where a more centralized organization led to fewer layers of bureaucracy and more consistent decision making. This move is Bartz’s clear statement that she is not only in control, but she views information as power and places her in a prime position to be at the center of an ongoing informational hub. For Yahoo!, it marks the end of labyrinth of roles within products, technologies and marketing and ushers in a model of greater individual accountability (not to mention public and behind-the-scenes sniping). In addition, Yahoo spokespeople say Bartz was appalled at the way Yahoo interacted with its customers and is creating a new Customer Advocacy group whose head (yet to be named) will gather customer insights and synthesize them for use across the organization.

Specifically, the new org structure looks like this:

• Tech and Product groups will be combined to create a single organization called Products. Products will be led by Ari Balogh as EVP of Products and CTO, reporting to Carol Bartz. This organization is responsible for the vision, strategy, and quality of every product we create — regardless of region, device format or category.

• Instead of multiple regions, there will be now two regions – North America and International. The regions are responsible for delivering Yahoo!’s products, programming and services to consumers, partners and advertisers in local markets. North America will be led by Hilary Schneider, EVP, North American Region, reporting to Carol Bartz. International’s leader will be hired soon.

* In mobile, David Ko will lead the mobile business, strategy and monetization teams for Yahoo! (Head of Global Mobile Business, reporting to Hilary Schneider).

• A Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) role has been created to oversee global marketing strategy and provide direction for our marketing function. The new CMO is Elisa Steele who was most recently with NetApps.

It’s worth calling out the deletion of regions and sub regions in the corporate structure. Only 30 percent of Yahoo!’s revenue comes from outside the U.S., so the company believes viewing their opportunity as two regions will allow them to have more uniform product messaging and product deployment. And while not a headline grabber, Yahoo! is creating a centralized Service Engineering & Operations (SE&O) team which will be chartered with delivering common technology services at scale, including application management and infrastructure. This should not only result in a cost savings but will allow the company to be more agile with a single point of internal technology governance.

Yahoo! followers are doing a light head scratch over the choice of Elisa Steele as CMO, wondering how a career at NetApps provides the expertise to work at Yahoo!. One school of thought would say marketing principles are uniform from one market to another; the other would be that there was a possible prior working relationship between Steele and Bartz during their time at Sun Microsystems. Also somewhat dampening the reorg message is the departure of Blake Jorgensen, Yahoo!’s CFO. Finding a suitable replacement will be crucial to keep Wall Street engaged and a believer in the company’s new direction.

So, what’s next? It would be great to be a fly on the wall in the Yahoo! cafeteria to gauge how the rank and file feels about the news. Yahoos should be glad to have a clearer, cleaner chain of command with management empowers rather than confuses its minions. The tale will not be told, however, until this shakeup actually results in some quick, market-changing offerings that gets everyone yodeling again.

Bartz has two parts in Act One of her Yahoo performance. She started off the call with a general overview that included a touch of humor, some honest observations and a slight dash of cheerleading calling Yahoo a “can do” company. Following Blake Jorgensen, Yahoo’s CFO, providing drill down into the numbers, Bartz returned to the call with some generalities about the future, then firmly noted she did not join the company to sell it, but was far more evasive in speaking about Yahoo’s intent to sell its search business. She did say that search has value beyond revenue and market prestige in that it yields valuable data about consumer behavior which the company uses to sharpen its product focus. That point does not preclude Yahoo having access to that data if the search business was sold.

While Bartz played her intentions close to the vest, admitting she is still learning about Yahoo!, she emphasized her focus would be in fixing the organization to become one geared to deliver speedy answers, communicate better internally and facilitate the deployment of innovation. “These are things I am pretty good at,” Bartz noted, having accomplished those very tasks as former CEO of Autodesk.

A few other takeaways: It was interesting there was no mention of Yahoo’s connected TV business which was one of the highlights of CES 2009. Yahoo stands poised to become a major player in the interactive TV platform business and was certainly noteworthy. In addition, for those who worry about Yahoo paying the light bill, the company has $3.6 billion in cash and marketable securities on its balance sheet. With that sort of coin in her pocket, we’re going to see if Bartz has some riverboat gambler in her makeup and begins a buying spree of undervalued companies whose add could generate new products and services as well as some much better excitement and buzz. Eight days does not give us much to go on, but Bartz seems suited for the role of Yahoo CEO as we anxiously await acts two and three.

Bartz is a solid and safe choice that will be an easy sell to the board and Wall Street. From her days at Autodesk, she is known as a fair and honest leader who is skilled at bringing diverse engineering and product groups together for a common goal. As a former VP of marketing at Sun during its halcyon days, she was instrumental in helping grow the company into a billion-dollar-plus giant. Bartz is a leader for tough times, having fought through numerous brand and product reinventions not to mention economic climate changes. According to her profile in Management CV, Bartz’s primary skill is her “ability to bridge the creative chaos of cutting edge software development with the necessary management structure and operations process to create an efficient but entrepreneurial corporate culture.” Sounds like a strength that plays to Yahoo’s current weakness.

At the same time, Bartz is not a Silicon Valley insider nor is she someone who brings a lot of Web experience to Yahoo!, but there’s plenty of that to go around at the once iconic Web portal. What the company lacks is a firm business leader that can instill confidence in Wall Street, major partners, advertisers as well as Yahoo! employees. Yahoo! is no doubt looking for someone who brings the sort of leadership skills lacking since Tim Koogle left the company in 2001 to pursue new ventures. Is Bartz’s Yahoo!’s counter to Eric Schmidt who brought “adult supervision” to the Serge and Larry show? Only time will tell.

Beyond all the empirical evidence, Bartz is a courageous person who overcame serious health issues and has stated publicly she considers her role as mother to be among her most important. At age 60, she’s no young Turk, but 60 is the new 40. That is if you have the goods to back it up, and Bartz may have the goods to turn Yahoo! around.

According to Lycos’s tally of top searches for 2008 (I guess it’s over before it’s over), nothing related to jobs, Iraq, McCain, Obama, financial bailouts or gas prices made the top 10 searches for the year. The top searches are: Poker, Paris Hilton, YouTube, golf, Sarah Palin, Brittney Spears, Clay Aiken, Pamela Anderson, Facebook and Holly Madison. And since I had no idea who Holly Madison was (not related to Dolly Madison), I searched and found out she’s in that reality TV show with Hef and his “granddaughters.” (Couldn’t resist that one).

For the record: man of the year based on Lycos searches? Clay Aiken, not Barack Obama. And if you are wondering why NBC is thinking about cutting back on prime time programming? Consider that the top TV programs based on searches were “Star Trek Enterprise” (is that still even on?) and “Dancing with the Stars.” Now that’s entertainment.

What will the top searches for ’09 be? Hard to predict, but unless you’re playing with plastic chips, I am betting poker won’t be one of them.

Let’s be clear on one thing—very little of Yahoo’s current problems are Yang’s fault. If fingers are to be pointed, I think they should look in the direction of Terry Semel, the CEO whose background with Warner Bros. was supposed to turn Yahoo! into an entrainment and media company. This is not to say key technologies that would have made Yahoo! competitive in the search business were totally overlooked, they were just not a priority. The infamous “Peanut Butter Manifesto” that spoke to Yahoo!’s inability to prioritize, is the perfect touchstone to Yahoo’s decline. And even though Semel tried to surround himself with smart tech sorts, that lack of native engineering experience at a crucial time in the company’s existence gave Google a window of opportunity to turn search into the center of the consumer experience and pull away from the pack. Under Semel’s rule, Yahoo! missed opportunities in such key social areas as blogging while pouring money into a TV effort that wound up going dark.

Keep in mind Yang never saw himself as the sort of leader to take Yahoo to greatness. It was under CEO Tim Koogle, a homespun sort that was the ultimate left-brain, right-brain leader, that Yahoo first rose to international prominence in the mid-‘90s. He was the “adult” who came in to supervise the kids much as Eric Schmidt did when he brought order to Google’s chaos under Serge and Larry.

What now? For those who think a new CEO will magically result in a Microsoft acquisition, a look at the stock price for both companies should dispel that notion, at least until the global economic order is restored. If Yahoo! is smart, and I think they are, they will be on the hunt for two different sorts of leaders. On one hand, there are young turks like Jason Kilar, ex of Amazon, now head of Hulu, who take lessons learned from the tech-business wars. Perhaps there are emerging stars at Amazon, Google, Apple and other successful companies whose names will be in play. On the other hand, one has to consider turnaround specialists who excel in taking once-powerful brands and reigniting/reinventing them to thrive yet again.

Last I heard, Tim Koogle was selling luxury real estate in Mexico. Anyone have his number?

I find it interesting that 86 percent of people say they have a print directory on their home. My hunch is, like me, they have no idea where it is.

So, I wondered what happens when I search for Michael Phelps on the other major search providers. At Yahoo!, there are text links and images and on Microsoft’s Live Search, again images and text. The best results page by far was from Ask where a well laid-out page of images, video and text gave me a one-stop place to learn about the Olympic swimmer. Ask recently did a major upgrade including the deployment of more powerful semantic search and a cool, clean design. Ask’s aim is to gain market share as well as increase the number of queries regular Ask.com users do each month. Judging from this exercise, Ask shows renewed promise (although their new TV ads are somewhat peculiar).

I gave Sergey one more shot and went back to Google and voila: the Michael Phelps page had video. It wasn’t as well displayed as Ask’s, but he made good on his word.