2008 has not been kind to Yahoo. It began with a buyout offer from Microsoft that they promptly screwed up, and was followed by the disintegration of their ad deal with Google and two rounds of layoffs. Now it appears CEO Jerry Yang has finally had enough.
Yang announced his resignation last night, saying he will remain on the board of directors and reclaim his old title of “Chief Yahoo.” Yang has been under the microscope of his shareholders ever since he rejected Microsoft’s offer of $33 per share for being too low. Yahoo’s shares are now trading at a mere $11 each. He now appears to regret his decision.
“To this day I would say that the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo,” he said at a conference two weeks ago. And when quizzed on if he would stick to a higher price that he demanded back in May added, “Oh no. At the right price, whatever the price is.”
But Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer didn’t bite and said a couple of days later, “We are not interested in going back and re-looking at an acquisition. I don’t know why they would be either, frankly. They turned us down at $33 a share.”
Ouch. Yahoo has begun the search for a successor, but finding someone willing to take over the tough job of turning around what was once the net’s top search engine won’t be easy, and for now what lies in the company’s future is anyone’s guess.
Read: [PC World]
In a sign of how things are going at Yahoo, I'm betting his email to employees didn't make it past the Yahoo spam filter and now sits in everyone's junk mail folder along with ads for hair restoration cremes.