Former Autodesk CEO Carol Bartz has agreed to become the next chief executive of Yahoo, a job many might consider thankless and others one of the greatest turnaround challenges of the internet age.

Bartz's selection would end a two-month search to replace Jerry Yang, who served as CEO for about a year—arguably one of its worst ever of the post-bubble era, including a botched takeover bid from Microsoft.

Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock said Bartz possessed "the exact combination of seasoned technology executive and savvy leader that the Board was looking for ..."

"She is admired in the Valley as well as on Wall Street for her deep management expertise, strong customer orientation, excellent people skills, and firm understanding of the challenges facing our industry,' he said in a statement. "Carol meets all of the criteria we set for the search and is the only person to whom we offered the job."

Bartz is currently executive chairwoman of Autodesk and has been an executive at Sun Microsystems. She sits on the board of Cisco (with Yang) and on the Intel board with Yahoo president Sue Decker, who was another aspirant for the Yahoo top job. Decker announced her resignation from Yahoo as the company was confirming the choice of Bartz for CEO.

Bartz's name began circulating widely last week after weeks of tantalizing rumors—mainly from Silicon Alley Insider and AllThingsD—that something was afoot at Yahoo, be it a succession or a rumored deal with AOL.

Now the Valley parlor game is over, won by a solid, if not terribly well-known tech executive whose brief is unclear: will she be warming the seat for eventual absorption by a Microsoft-like behemoth or is she meant to forge the independent path Yahoo has frequently articulated as its desired path?

Her credential are impressive, but not marquee: According to her official bio at Autodesk—a company half the size of Yahoo—the company grew revenues from $285 million to $1.523 billion during her 1992 to 2006 tenure.  Bartz holds an honors degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin, giving her some geek cred, but not the kind that geeks would necessarily find impressive.

Bartz was also on President Bush's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. In 2005 she was named one of the "50 Most Powerful Women in Business" by Fortune, "50 Women to Watch" by The Wall Street Journal, "The World’s 30 Most Respected CEOs" by Barron's, and "World’s 100 Most Powerful Women by Forbes.