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On Madison Avenue, people still talk about the disgraceful way Wenda Harris Millard was ushered out of Yahoo. The short version: Millard called Sue Decker, Yahoo's president, to turn down her offer of a job running international sales and let her know she was taking a top job at Martha Stewart instead. Decker reacted furiously, locking Millard out of her office and issuing a press release which made it sound like Millard had been fired. Now Millard is having the last laugh, as it's Decker's job which looks to be on the line. At an advertising conference in New York this week, Millard explained how Yahoo went astray by favoring technology over salesmanship, leaving the door open for Microsoft:

Yahoo lost sight of who they are and who their customers are. Yahoo's perception is that their only competitor is Google. But 95 percent of their revenue comes from advertising — so their competitors are really the broadcast TV networks. They think they're in the search game, when they should really be in the brand advertising game.... Advertising is a business that is both art and science. The merger focuses unduly on science. With Google-Doubleclick, and Yahoo-Microsoft, it is as if the scientific community is taking over advertising. And advertising is not about science.