More speculation on Jerry Yang's fate

Sue Decker

(Credit: Dan Farber)

Kara Swisher of AllThingsD.com puts Sue Decker at the top of her list to succeed Jerry Yang as Yahoo CEO if he returns to his former position of founder and chief Yahoo. She acknowledges that the Yahoo president has been part of the team that put Yahoo in its current position, but that she "might blossom if she had full control" over the company. It seems that she already has a lot of control over the company, based on her performance at the D6 conference and analyst calls over the last few months.

Kara also listed former eBay CEO Meg Whitman (who is busy as co-chair of the McCain presidential campaign), former Yahoo COO Dan Rosensweig, and even Mark Cuban. Check out Kara's complete list.

Whatever transpires, it would be very difficult for Yang to give up the CEO seat. He wants to prove that he can turn around the company, but he may not be given a chance given all the tumult. Since Microsoft pounced on February 1, Yang's purple blood has been in the water, drawing a number of detractors, such as investor Carl Icahn, who would like to see him and the board gone.

Replacing Yang and appointing Decker as CEO or bringing in an outsider to run the company isn't going to dramatically alter the course of Yahoo history. The company needs to focus on products--getting its Yahoo Open Strategy and AMP advertising platform released. With a number of key people leaving and the ongoing drama around Yahoo's future, Yang's to-do list is not getting any less challenging.

[lkrupp]

testing

[Renegade Knight]

eBay experience would be a negative with any CEO at this point. UNLESS they got out before eBay started down it's current path.

[Kwasiowusu]

From his ham handed, anti-shareholder handling of the Microsoft bid, and the brain dead, totally senseless pact that he entered into with Google, whereby Google gets to the tune of $250 million if Yahoo even tries to break away from Google's grim cluthes, it's clear to me that the haples Jerry Yang couldn't run a public toilet if his life depended on it. Time for this shareholder value destroying imbecile to be sent packing where he came from.

[eightwings]

Replacing Yang by anybody, now matter how qualified, would be a huge mistake. Yang is to Yahoo what Jobs is to Apple. Watch Yahoo bounce back like a tiger and confound the doomsday prophets. Having said that, I think it is time for Jerry Yang to consider diversifying into some other area of the computer universe. Search and advertising are not the only fish in the computer ocean. For example, consider that the computer industry is currently in a world of hurt with regard to the multicore/parallel programming crisis. This is a perfect opportunity for an outsider to come into the playground and show the old computer geeks at Intel and Microsoft how things should be done. The writing is on the wall: whoever solves the multicore problem is going to dominate the computer industry in this century.

Louis Savain
http://rebelscience.blogspot.com/

[Kwasiowusu]

eightwings :"Yang is to Yahoo what Jobs is to Apple."

Gimme a break! Yang has been there right from the getgo, and watched as Google came from nowhere and grabbed search from Yahoo. Yahaoo has no answrrs to their long standing problems whatsoever. Yang is part of the problem, instead of part of the solution. Time to send this sucker packing.

[inachu]

I think Jerry Yang will become a very famous porn star someday.

[WilliamBanzai7]

Yahoo is a silicon zombie. Don't expect anything cutting edge to come out of there. The decision to outsource search to Google is an admission that the company is an inferior player in the new economy. If all they can do is develop the portal, they may as well bring back Semmel. I thought they were moving beyond that, but it a appears that aspirations were not matched with intellectual brawn. The real gray matter is housed at Google.

[Sugiarto Setiabudi]

The speculation is without merit.

Yang who will still exist as Yahoo CEO