Yahoo!

Clearly the author of this article does not know people at Y, because Yang will indeed be missed.

Facts:

1. Jerry Yang succeeded and was awarded handsomely for his stake in Yahoo! when the firm went public. He has inspired many people to take risk and do what they like to do.

2. As a CEO of a publicly traded firm, he failed his fiduciary duty miserably; That is to maximize the shareholders and stakeholders' value.

3. The Economist did not pass the test either. Many posts here are based on opinions which do not neccessarily reflect facts. Critical/Rational thinking 101 anyone?

"yahoo's ex-ceo will not be missed" thats a bit too harsh....not the type of language u would expect from the economist

I think the article is too harsh...

Yahoo still has a very decent mail system (not as good as gmail, but much faster)

And a very good financial section, that is far better than FT or Google finance...

Search engine seems a bit rough for me and it does not have maps, but other than that still quite an interesting buy, for example for Chinese baidu...

So in all if his biggest mistake was to reject an offer that is higher than the current valuation i still wouldnt consider him a failure...

And quoting a hedge fund guy over an entrepreneur is a joke...

Yup, he launched a great company, and in time, he believed his own press and his ego swelled so much that his hurt his thousands of shareholders by arrogantly ignoring a rich offer from Microsoft.

Arrogance is dangerous.

Evidently, many commenters here weren't shareholders.

Turning down the offer from MS may be his biggest mistake, but he also did many things correct. The one billion dollar investment he made in Alibaba in 2005 now worth 17 billion. Without this investment, would MS still offer Yahoo 47 billion?

After all, he built this company from scratch. Not for him, Yahoo could have disappeared long time ago, like many others after the dot com crash.

"will not be missed"?

So - in your own time, no pressure - what have you ever created?

There's no doubt that rejecting the MSFT offer was a poor decision, but I think one of the key figures in the "modern" internet deserves a little more respect than that. Maybe even as much as 10% of the fawning The Economist affords to catastrophically failed leaders in the financial services sector.

It took Yahoo almost 4 years to get rid of that incompetent imbecile? He rejected a $47 billion offer from Microsoft - maker of the world's preferred (not best) Operating System - as he thought he could get "more" for what amounts to a bloated search engine that has the amount and type of competetion MS does not. The rejection of Steve Ballmer's more than generous offer was not based on the desire for more money but on stupid principles that may make sense when representing oneself, but does not when one is the head of a corporation representing millions of shareholders and thousands of workers. Mr. Yang got his billions in the bank, and should have thought more of the welfare of his firm, Yahoo, rather than his moronic "hippie" belief in "fighting The Man (Ballmer)". In the world of business, companies exist to earn profits, not to make political and philosophical stands at the cost of jobs and corporate profits. This imbecile will not be missed, his departure is already being celebrated worldwide just like the fall of Ghaddafy. The tragedy is not only that Yaoo missed out on a deal of a lifetime, but now the "hated" Mr. Ballmer - a man not to be disrespected - can buy all of Yahoo for pennies on the Dollar. And after watching collossus after giants of business clumsily trip and fall - just like the captain of that Italian cruiser - I wonder why is it that the bigger and more expensive the stupidity, the more lenient the punishment is compared to say, a dumb teenager smoking weed being beaten by the police, arrested, incarcerated, raped, fined, and his/her career destroyed for life?

I remember when you had to manually submit your Internet listing to Yahoo and then wait for its editors to approve it. Looking back the idea of spidering links (which is essently what google does) is a better way to build an index of what is out there.

Google rendered Yahoo moot because it's search algorithm (which uses input from readers) made it no longer necessary to employee editors to organize web pages. There is no business genius out there who could have solved that problem so quit picking on the guy.

As a former Y! employees, I could say that losing Jerry is bad for Y!'s culture. Jerry and David were the guardian of the culture and they make sure that the company takes good care of the employees even when the parasites (middle management hired from MSN, AOL, Myspace, Carol Bartz etc.) tried to "turn the company around" by cutting cost aggressively.

Hi,
Cheerio to the chief, don’t phone us, we’ll phone you. One gets the impression he was sacked because of not taking the Microsoft offer.
Regards Terence Hale

Like perhaps others before him, Yang made great contribution to the internet world and the founding and success of Yahoo paved ways for success of others and enriched many Wall Street bankers and brokers. He should be missed as a living guru.

To dispatch him at the end of this article that he “will not be missed” is ungrateful, without foresight and unkind.

Some might miss more the missed chance to take the high offer proposed by Microsoft. I dont know what kind of persons can make a wise decision to either sell or buy at right price and time. So much regrets for so many ordinary people living their ordinary life. Chance wont wait for hesitant people. Its a good case of "you had the chance!". And its wrong to think that a guy can stay forever young and bright. The great leader had the experience to step down three times.

I use mostly the quite comprehensive Yahoo services.

YHOO went up 3% which hardly is "soaring".

In 1985 fresh from the release of the Macintosh Computer, Steve Jobs was fired from Apple. He was escorted by security and had to pack all desk contents in a box. Rejected from the company he founded. No one could speak of him again as he was a persona non grata.

But looking back, Jobs remarked that this was one of his most important experiences that enable him to mature and grow.

He became less arrogant and more diplomatic. Less of a tyrant and more of a leader. More focused on his strengths and vision. And he found and followed his passion...strangely it was cartoon animation. He made his way back to Apple in a little less than a decade. Of course by that time Apple was run into the ground and 6 weeks from bankruptcy.

In every life, a little rain must fall.
And if it weren't for the lows, the highs would not seem so remarkable.

17 years at a Silicon Startup is better than 99% of companies in the Silicon Grinder.

Like Jobs, Jerry has a wonderful opportunity to start anew. Of the two, only one has a Phd in computer science from Stanford Univ.

Gulliver found the Yahoos to be excessive epicureans. The Hounnyhymms were more balanced.

This is the first day of the rest of your life. Put your ding on the universe. You could be the NeXT Steve Jobs. There are great second acts in Silicon Valley. After a year it two, maybe Apple needs a hot CEO?

Jerry Yang has ridden the doc com wave from its infancy to the climax and back down again. As an successful entrepreneur, Mr Yang will always have my respect.

With that said, I do not see Yahoo providing any value to its users. Yahoo search is not exactly cutting edge. Yahoo mail occasionally fails to load for me. Yahoo's front page is a clutter of celebrity gossip and other news. Almost anything yahoo does, its competitors does better. As a website, yahoo has become a jack of all, master of none.