After months of indecision, Yahoo has reportedly decided on a new chief executive: Carol Bartz.

Though many thought Yahoo president Susan Decker would replace beleaguered leader Jerry Yang, who bungled the company’s deal with Microsoft last year and stepped down two months ago, it seems the search engine’s powers that be thought Bartz made a better head honcho. Bartz, for those of you who don’t know, comes from Autodesk, an architectural software firm. She’s no doubt familiar with some of her new colleagues, namely Decker, with whom she sits on the Intel board.

Yahoo has yet to make the announcement, but Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal are citing an anonymous source as saying it’s a done deal. Now, of course, comes the big question: Can Bartz clean up the mess Yang helped create? Probably not right away. Business Week explains: 

Yahoo’s stock, which stood at about $20 a share a year ago, had dropped to around $12 a share in recent months. Even after the Bartz news was reported this morning, Yahoo’s stock was down a fraction on a relatively flat day so far for the overall market.

The seeming lack of confidence may be surprising, since the CEO pick was a big uncertainty for the company. What’s more, by many accounts, Bartz is a strong leader of the kind Yahoo clearly can use.

But investors hate uncertainty, and for now, that’s what Bartz’s appointment brings. Her age (60) and the fact that she stepped back from the CEO job at Autodesk a while ago could indicate she’s not likely to be a longtimer at Yahoo, which leads some such as TechCrunch to speculate she’s dressing Yahoo up for a sale of part or all of the business. But with Microsoft playing hard-to-get lately, and perennial rumors of a Yahoo-AOL linkup never coming to anything, the prospects for investor-pleasing deals remain way up in the air.

That shouldn’t be news, of course, because it would seem our entire economy’s up in the air. Regardless, we’re hoping Bartz can follow through and save Yahoo from going the way of the dodo.