Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang to step down

Although Yang is smart, it is clearly that he is not the business type of person. As a leader, he has failed the investors and has failed the employees. A true leader does not just knowing when to step up for challenges but also know when to step down to take the responsibilities. I certainly hope this will teach Yang a good lesson about who he is, what what he can be and not to misuse investors and employees trust.

It’s about time. He’s a smart guy, but he has been a disastrous CEO. Everyone I know at Yahoo thinks he is horrible, and morale there is incredibly low. Yahoo needs to hire an outsider who will invigorate the company and make it just as exciting a place to work as Google or Facebook.

Everything is coming to a change. With the web going to 2.0 and Cable prices going sky high and deals with smaller and larger companies being forced to fold and downgrade, it was inevitable for this change to take place.

The future of entertainment is here.
http://www.cabletvfor5bucks.us

He can now be a Jerry’s Kid for telethon dollars, every Memorial Day

OMG i thought this was the poker champion JERRY YANG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Despite Yahoo’s missteps, don’t overlook some of the positive contributions they have made—like Google—to the developer community. “High Performance Web Sites” by Steve Souders is a must-read for web developers. Yahoo’s User Interface Library (YUI) is an innovate suite of tools for front-end engineers. No, these things won’t impress Wall Street nor generate revenue for the company but they make my day job easier. It’s difficult for me to completely write off a company that at least does that for free.

@Bruce – Please tell me where Google is going.

Good that he is leaving. I will soon grab both Yahoo and Google. Hahaha.. The world will be mine! -Bill Gates

CHOKE!

jerry yang is a tool. they got to proud of themselves and forgot that their stock was about to hit rock bottom.

You’ll NEVER see $30+ a share offers EVER again!!!

HA SUCKERS!!

Yahoo is not a real company anyway. Search portal is a program, and the company is a remnant of the Internet Boom that is around because it makes people feel stable. There is so stability and this stupid company has nothing to offer anyone. Same is true of Google. have you ever searched for anything on either of these companies, the results they return is garbage, and they return more and more of it thinking they are helping us. Yahoo lost whatever it had at one point, they had message boards and personals, they were fun, but now they are just too big, they cannot moderate their boards of track their customers, there’s no community there. They and Google will soon be gone.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way does not apply anymore. You better be leading and the future is mobile. Why do you think Google and Microsoft are fighting so hard in this space. CHeck out http://www.socaltext.com and http://www.mobiletain.com to see the future of mobile and advertising. People need to get out of the stine age and Yahoo is included in this list.

Besides the loss of the possible deal with Microsoft, there have been some unwelcome changes at Yahoo during Jerry’s tenure as CEO, even though he was obviously very influential before. I don’t know if the changes were driven by Jerry himself, Sue, Blake, or who, but I’ve been a customer of Yahoo since it’s begimning, and these recent changes, especially in style and attitude, are sure noticeable. And not helpful. And overall quality of the operation seems to be heading downhill.

An example is the big jump in annual domain registration fees from $10 to $35 (bizarre, and with no proper warning to clients). Alsp, in my case, what I consider unethical and unauthorized renewal of several domains (at the new higher price, using retained credit card information), with no notification before or afterwards, nothing. Worse was the staff’s attitude when I tried to sort things out. That’s a big, and unwelcome, change from the old Yahoo. Needless to say, there’s no praise for the “new” Yahoo in my newsletter.

Incidently, these concerns were communicated to the Justice Department during their deliberations on the Yahoo-Google deal. They reinforced the worries expressed by advertisers and by Microsoft about the likelihood of capricious price increases and other financial issues concerening the proposed partial merger. They contributed to the rejection of that deal.

It’s too late for yahoo. Better sell it to Microsoft now. At least they will get $20 a share. Otherwise, Microsoft will put another offer for $5 a share.

ANOTHER PRIME EXAMPLE OF GREED AT WORK.

“Greed is Good” Anyone?

Here it is again Wall Street is driving a great American company into the sh*thole for short term gains.

Why is stock price running ALL the companies now? How are companies going to strategize for the long term if stock price is all they care about?

It is Wall Street’s greed that had turned the mighty American industries into bunch of insolvent shame.

Lehman, Bear, GM, AIG, Ford…more to come…

Selling out to MicroShaft would have ruined Yahoo….Bonehead Ballmer (thanks for Vista….NOT!!!) would have run it into the ground just like is doing to MS. Yahoo should refocus and rebuild on its core competencies.

To all those posters who claim “Yahoo is Jerry Yang’s company and he can do what he wants” – are you kidding me??!! Yahoo ceased being Jerry Yang’s company the minute he took it public. Yahoo now belongs to the shareholders and the CEO’s primary responsibility is to those shareholders, not to his own ego.

Todd writes

“It is his company, he can do what he wants with it ”

Ummm, see it’s a public company and he has a responsibility to his shareholders – thats what happens when you sell out. So while his intentions might be noble and pure – and his contribution to the company cant be underestimated, he is over his head and not adding to the value of the company. So long Jerry ; now go home and cry in a bag of money.

Yahoo was started by Yang and it was his ‘baby’. I agree with Angry Mouse in that all of you that are whining are just downright greedy. It is his company, he can do what he wants with it and if you are so greedy and do not like what someone else does with their own company, then sell your stocks and go elsewhere. And wall street be damned…. Wall street is the main reason we are in financial crisis and it is also the cause of many company failures. Just because some idiot made some statement who in reality does not know his head from his rear, many companies end up either making billions or going bankrupt. It is no longer about making a good product or service anymore.. no it is all about greed and convincing some talking head to say nice things about your ‘company’ so the stock goes up. the sad things is many many people are so blinded by greed they cannot see the writing on the wall…. or anywhere else for that matter….

Wall Street is the new “Sin City” — people gamble big and lose big. Time after time. We’ve learned little from 1929. Maybe we’ll have a another “great depression” and World War to make us all come back to our senses.

Before greed sets in again.

It is Jerry’s company, he founded it. Why on earth would you want Microsoft to aquire yahoo? You people are whining about losing money on staocks? Boo Hoo. cry me a river. Your greed is what is wrong with this country, Wall Street? get lost. Hmmm, lets all push big companies to crap on thier employees even more, so you who love wall street so much can line your pockets a bit more. I have no sympathy for any of you. Actually, I laugh at you. Go Jerry.

I switched to Yahoo! e-mail when Microsoft tried to force us into this “Windows Live” thing.

At first, Yahoo! Mail was great, and the smap filter and features were far better than Hotmail. Vacation response? No problem.

But lately, there have been more and more glitches and outages, and sometimes they run for hours. Uploading and attaching files, in particular seems to be a problem.

Fortunately, I still have my Hotmail and Gmail accounts as a backup (they presently all forward to Yahoo! but I may change that).

They seem to have lost track of the basics. If your service sucks, people leave. No people, no eyeballs. Advertisers want eyeballs. So you’d better provide a decent service.

Seems like a no-brainer, right? You’d be suprised how many folks screw it up.

About time. He refused an offer from Microsoft he should not have refused. He ignored the lessons of the Internet Bubble. And that is: When Microsoft walks into the room with their lawyers and a suitcase full of $$$ you TAKE THE DEAL!!! Just because you’re “smart” doesn’t mean you have common sense! Shareholders…uh sorry about that!!!

Yea I vote for MurderDoc too. He would put 111% into Yahow. Gosh darnit he even knows what SOW stands for.

Jerry Yang stepped on his wang when he blew the MS deal. Hindsight is always 20/20 eh?

“While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies.”

– Rep. Tom Lantos (D., Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, to Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and General Counsel Michael Callaghan, Nov. 6, 2007

This doesn’t seem to have as much to do with his inability to turn the company around in 17 months as it does with the fact that he botched the opportunity to reward shareholders, the board, and Wall Street with a Microsoft buyout.

Yahoo made strategic errors. Not buyng out Facebook was one. Then getting in to being a media company was another. Its financial products were weak. It ignored India which is now the largest base for Microsoft MSN. Yahoo also replaced startup minds with CEO-types who are bureacratic and whose primary obsession was to siphon money out from the company in to ad agencies founded by their friends and relatives, and to rob content from smaller and lesser-known blogs and web sites. This was Yahoo’s fundamental problem at least as far as India goes.

Yahoo also never launched its ad model, like Google did, when it could have been a good alternative. Perhaps this had more to do with Google-Yahoo alliance.

When Yahoo sacked its former CEO, I knew that this was the starting point for its downfall. It was a typical move that startups do when they want to ‘corporatize’ their structure. Like a child who becomes a teen and then has to masterbate to prove it.

In ancient Hindu texts there is a statement” Vinaash Kaale Viparit Buddhi (At the time of your destruction, confusion would overpower thinking).

Such has been the case of Yahoo.

I hate to tell you this Jerry, but you should have known this is coming when you allowed “Carl Icchan” to accumulate all those shares. What did you think his reputation as a “Corporate Raider” meant?



Fight back, and hang in there. Call for an “Emergency Board Meeting”, and convince them that you and David Filo are the visionaries whose vision gave birth to this company vs. Icchan who is there only to make a quick buck, and will sell that company out in a garage sale, if it brings him a few more pennies more per share.



Don’t give up.

joseph davidovic says: We have to recognize what he accomplished and be impressed. There are few who have left such a legacy in the internet world. It’s easy to be an armchair critic, but once you have all the facts and details, we may have reached the same conclusion. In my opinion MSFT and Google probably acted in bad faith trying to weaken Yahoo, unfortunately Yang, although he realized what he was getting into, really didn’t have much of an alternative.

Joseph Davidovic

Will Yang give back the billions he got from shareholders? If not, the gesture is not only far too late, it is far too little.

I could hear all the shareholders screaming Yahooooo-oooh-ooooh!

It’s about time that Yang steps down. He needs to leave the company in order for the company to move forward. If I were CEO, his bonuses would be kept and he’d be sent on his way. Business is Business and he’s driven the company down into the dirt just like McNealy & Schwartz. The best thing would be for H&S to call me and I’ll come in and replace YANG and then replace McNealy & Schwartz and let’s get those companies back on their feet. It’s easy, you just need passion which all of these individuals severely lack.

Michael Murdock, CEO
DocMurdock.com

Yahoo reminds me a lot of Palm – it used to be at the top of its industry, but it long since lost touch with what customers really want, focusing instead on what overpaid, disconnected executives thought should be the focus of the company. Instead of schizophrenic negotiations with Microsoft and Google to get a larger foothold in the advertising industry, Yahoo needed to step up to the plate and create a solution itself. Yang and the rest of the Yahoo team act as though the internet is still at the place it was in 1997 or 1998. It’s 10 years later, and their business model hasn’t changed to reflect the changes in technology and customer demand. All I can hope is that Yang has an epiphany like Steve Jobs did, and that he eventually takes the company back in the direction of progress instead of stagnation.

’bout time.

OK I will accept the position. It’s a step down from running my site http://www.searchtheentirecraigslist.com but yahoo has all those great dating ads with the pretty girls and my wife won’t let me put them on our site. What perks!

i still have faith in yang

This is the company Yang started and he had the right to do whatever he wanted. Don’t like it, “tough”

I have heard of YAHO, they talk about it in Scarface all the time

He should leave, he let pride get in the way of maximizing shareholder value; which as CEO is one and only job.

Poor guy’s gonna be unemployed, broke and destitute.

Yang has alot of passion I respect him for fighting for what he truly believed in. The Problem here was that he looked at his company as if it was his child and made some bad decisions that cost his company, employees and shareholders alot of money.

Its a wise decision, i think Yahoo should focus on new products to lift share value.

He should have stepped down long ago, if not for him, the Microsoft deal probably would have gone through. Another GREEDY CEO!!!!

I can’t speak for his performance, but 17 months is not very long to change a company that’s trajectory has been downward (even if the revenues weren’t) for years.

The “O” is leaving YAHOO. Will it be YAHO now?

Yikes! Yahoo’s Yang Yanked!