Yahoo!’s CEO Carol Bartz was fired over the phone today, she told Yahoo! employees in an email at around 4:30 p.m. Bartz has been one of the most successful, the most sought after and one of the highest paid CEO’s in the tech world. However, to many Yahoo! investors, the former CEO was also one of the most disappointing CEO’s in the tech world.

Bartz stated in her email to Yahoo employees:

“To all, I am very sad to tell you that I’ve just been fired over the phone by Yahoo!’s Chairman of the Board. It has been my pleasure to work with all of you and I wish only the best going forward.”

Yahoo!’s Chairman of the Board Roy Bostock thanked Bartz for her service to the company “during a critical time of transition in the company’s history, and against a very challenging macro-economic backdrop.” He said the board “sees enormous growth opportunities on which Yahoo! can capitalize, and our primary objective is to leverage the Company’s leadership and current business assets and platforms to execute against these opportunities.”

She was brought into the company at one of the toughest times in history, given that it had just turned down a very lucrative buyout offer from Microsoft. Bartz, who was CEO for about 30 months and had one year left on her contract, was hired to boost Yahoo!’s fortunes and those of investors. However, the stock price didn’t move and to add insult to injury, companies like Google, Facebook and Zynga grew tremendously and generated huge profits from web traffic that Yahoo! failed to do.

Yahoo!’s Chief Financial Officer Tim Morse will step in as an interim CEO. Yahoo! has not given any indication on plans beyond this.