“Yahoo Inc co-founder Jerry Yang has quit the company he started in 1995, appeasing shareholders who had blasted the Internet pioneer for pursuing an ineffective personal vision and impeding investment deals that could have transformed the struggling company,” Alexei Oreskovic reports for Reuters.
“Yang’s abrupt departure comes two weeks after Yahoo appointed Scott Thompson its new CEO, with a mandate to return the once-leading Internet portal to the heights it enjoyed in the 1990s,” Oreskovic reports.
MacDailyNews Take: We hereby mandate free pie for everyone! (Doesn’t mean it gonna happen.)
“Wall Street views the exit of ‘Chief Yahoo’ Yang as smoothing the way for a major infusion of cash from private equity, or a deal to sell off much of its 40 percent slice of China’s Alibaba, unlocking value for shareholders,” Oreskovic reports. “Shares of Yahoo gained 3 percent in after-hours trade.”
“Yang, who is severing all formal ties with the company by resigning all positions including his seat on the board of directors, has come under fire for his handling of company affairs dating back to an aborted sale to Microsoft in 2008,” Oreskovic reports. “SYang and co-founder David Filo, both of whom carried the official title ‘Chief Yahoo,’ own sizable stakes in the company. Yang owns 3.69 percent of Yahoo’s outstanding shares, while Filo owns 6 percent as of April and May 2011.”
Oreskovic reports, “‘Lots of people think he holds up innovation there with old ideas and (is) slow to decide and that he’s not an innovator himself for being at such a high level,” said one former Yahoo employee. ‘People have very high expectations for founders. Everyone wants a Steve Jobs,’ the employee said, referring to Apple’s co-founder who brought the company back from near death and transformed it into the world’s most valuable tech company.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
“Lots of people think he holds up innovation there with old ideas and (is) slow to decide and that he’s not an innovator himself for being at such a high level,…”
Sound like old what’s his name at M$.
Who Ballmer?
I think that’s the name. He’s so insignificant he’s hard to remember.
Won’t it be nice when the day comes when we refer to Ballmer and Microshaft in the past tense? Distant past, I say, that is.
You mean when they are only mentioned in archives stored on dusty old 5-1/4 inch floppies and we have to dig a 1989 Pentium II PC out of the rent-a-storage locker to even read it (in green on black text, no less!)? Yeah. That sounds good to me also!
UPPERCASE ONLY. KIDS – THESE DAYS!
I am not saying this is the case but …. Yahoo reached those heights with Yang… Could going public with the bloated command structure tha inevitable bring caused the company’s downfall.
Now that Yabg is gone, if the boards theory is correct, Yahoo should become the powerhouse it once was again…. Yeah, right
Make mine cherry, with a small scoop of vanilla bean ice cream! M-mm.
I’m sure the new CEO and Board of Directors are going to ink a deal with Stevie Balmy and merge Yahoo and Bing search engines. I’m sure Stevie will do for Yahoo what he has done for M$ Windoze! 🙂
It is understood, that declining the deal of Yahoo to Microsoft was partly an Apple suggestion.
If Yahoo sold out it would only be Google and Microsoft in the game. Was that a Bad decision by Yang – NO WAY.
In the PC wars – MASS PRODUCTION – from MULTIPLE VENDORS of machines was a huge win for them. Microsoft struck DEALS with assemblers to install WINDOWs. QUALITY and INNOVATION was the trouble of the assembler.
APPLE unfortunately will not work in this fashion.
QUALITY control of the OS stays close at hand… and so mass production and multiple vendors/ assemblers COULD eventually as did Windows WIN more in MARKET share.
Its much the same war – but – in a global economy – where countries have kept the wealth at home – Google and Microsoft and Intel – all strike deals overseas. SELLING out on the HOMELAND America. That hurts us all – not lowering competition prices for consumers – no matter the innovations that occur in the war.
You do realize that Stevie Balmy is captain of the M$ Titanic Windoze and has just struck the iceberg. Stevie is reassuring all that there is no problem, everything is normal; smooth sailing and business as usual; even as it takes on water.
Please quit sporadically YELLING in your posts. It makes them difficult to read.
The PC was originally split into three parts – hardware (IBM), processor (Intel), and DOS/OS (Microsoft). You might add in a fourth part: key corporate/office applications such as MS Office (Microsoft). The OS later evolved into Windows after Apple paved the way. IBM eventually lost out on the personal computer market because multiple vendors began assembling computers from commodity components. Intel and Microsoft collected most of the profits from personal computers, and IBM eventually decided to focus on enterprise IT sales and service.
When you say that it is “unfortunate” that Apple will not license the manufacture of the Mac (and iOS ?) hardware to other vendors, I assume that you are pushing for Apple to seek increased market share. I don’t agree that this is a wise or necessary move.
First of all, Apple is already gaining market share and, indeed, currently holds a dominant position with iOS devices. Second, Apple is king of profit share in smartphones, tablets, laptops, and probably all-in-one (AIO) desktop computers like the iMac, too. That advantage has been gained through superior hardware/software design and integration. Diluting that approach by implementing more product options just to gain market share would be unwise. I would not expect higher quality products from the approach that you suggest, nor significant design innovation from other vendors.
As long as Apple continues to be successful using its current business paradigm, why change it?
unlocking value for shareholders
They’re dooomed!
LOL. Yahoo.
You know what Yahoo started out as? You know who Jerry Yang and David Filo were? They were just two college students who liked websites. They got sick of trading URLs back and forth, so they created a site to store all their URLs. Then they opened it to the public and called it Yahoo. That’s it. That’s the sum total of the “innovation” that started this Internet giant.
Yahoo was the first Internet catalog (not search engine) and became incredibly successful due to it being first. It became a publicly traded company, branched out into all kinds of things, and made those two college kids very rich.
But I don’t know why anyone expects someone who’s single grand idea was “Hey, why don’t we put all our favorite links on a single site” to be some kind of Jobs-like innovative genius. These two guys just lucked into some really great timing.
——RM