The only hope for advertisers is that Carol Bartz, the new Yahoo CEO, considers paid search to still be a priority for the company. The early rumours indicate this to be the case, but only time will tell.

With any luck, she’ll reverse a lot of the ‘improvements’ to the Yahoo platform we’ve seen over the last couple of years that seemed designed only to penalise their advertisers, thus driving them further and further into the hands of their competitors.

It’s going to be an interesting year, both for Yahoo’s employees, and for those who work with them on a daily basis.