Bye-Bye Jerry, We Will Try To Remember Some Good Things about You Anyway
by
on November 17, 2008,
So it finally happened - Jerry Yang will step down from his position as Yahoo CEO as soon as the company finds a replacement. We’ve been all waiting for it for quite a while now watching Jerry making a mistake after a mistake and looking like he hardly knows what exactly he should do to save the company he co-founded - the one that was losing its value by leaps and bounds and still the one many of us are fond of because it seems to be here forever and is something we can hardly imagine internet without.
I think it is safe to say that running a company like Yahoo can hardly be qualified like an easy business, especially with a fierce competition we are now having in the internet industry. Besides, everyone may lose focus or even understanding of what to do to do the job better and reach the results requested by shareholders of a company. And it looks very much like some time ago this was exactly what happened to Jerry Yang - he simply did not know how to handle Yahoo efficiently so no wonder we are seeing what we are seeing, both Yahoo’s financial state and Yang’s departure.
Jerry Yang’s resignation is surprisingly reported to be a joint decision of Yang himself and Yahoo directors but of course some people already express doubts and insist he was forced to leave. When a replacement is found for Yang, Jerry himself will resume his role of corporate visionary “Chief Yahoo” and will also stay on the company’s board of directors.
It is no surprise that dubious politics of the now almost former Yahoo CEO has resulted in multiple complaints from shareholders - after all, they lost billions after Jerry Yang declined the acquisition bid from Microsoft and Yahoo’s shares plummeted. Given how unhappy Yahoo shareholders have been with Jerry Yang and his decisions, it is no surprise that the company has seen 4% increase in stock price in after-hours trading and will probably see further growth tomorrow when NASDAQ opens again.
But now that Jerry Yang is leaving I think it will not hurt summarizing the major good things that he has done for Yahoo and the entire internet industry at that.
The first thing we should not forget is that it was Yang who initially co-founded the company and helped grow a huge internet business out of what started as a simple web directory. Yes, he was behind the business that Microsoft was ready to pay $47.5 billion to acquire earlier this year. So we have to admit that without Jerry Yang we would not have any Yahoo at all and we would have nothing to complain about either. So no matter how much Yahoo shareholders complain about his recent decisions, they should not forget that he must be the one who suffers the most as Jerry Yang must view Yahoo as a child of his.
We also should not forget that Jerry Yang was the one who managed to come to an agreement with Google to display Google’s ads in Yahoo’s search results pages. This deal was supposed to generate $250-$450 million of additional cash flow for Yahoo in the first year and I think it will not be a mistake to say that the deal was actually something revolutionary as reaching such an agreement with your main competitor is definitely notable. And we can hardly blame Yang for the fact that Google did not want to defend the deal in courts to prove it would not damage competition in the search market as everyone realized it would.
And finally - Jerry Yang has taken the decision to step down from the Yahoo CEO job and is prepared to pass the role to a successor. And this one is now viewed as a very positive move by many shareholders with some of them even claiming that Yang’s departure could revive the idea of Microsoft acquiring Yahoo as Steve Ballmer could be unwilling to resume talks with Yang but could be prepared to talk to another person heading the company. And since acquisition by Microsoft in full or in part is often considered as the only solution to save the company, this resignation may be another good thing Yang has done for Yahoo.
