Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo, resigns from all posts

Irish Sun Wednesday 18th January, 2012

NEW YORK - Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang has resigned from the board of directors and all other positions at the company, two weeks after Yahoo announced new leadership under CEO Scott Thompson.

Yang, who co-founded Yahoo in 1995 with David Filo, has also resigned from board positions at Yahoo Japan and the Chinese conglomerate Alibaba, in which Yahoo owns a stake.

Yang served as CEO from June 2007 to January 2009, when he stepped down amid shareholder anger after turning down a $47.5 billion (31 billion pounds) takeover offer from Microsoft in 2008.

Yang was replaced by Carol Bartz as CEO, who was fired by phone in September 2011.

"My time at Yahoo, from its founding to the present, has encompassed some of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life," Yang said in a letter to Yahoo! chairman Roy Bostock, included in today's statement. "However, the time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo."

New CEO Thompson was previously the president of PayPal, an eBay subsidiary.

In 2009,Yahoo gave up on search, a market that it once led.

It's also losing ground with its other cash cow, display advertising, to new entrants to the market such as Google and Facebook.

The Sunnyvale, California-based company's current market value is about $20 billion.

Yang's fellow co-founder Filo had stepped down from Yahoo's board in 1996, though he remains a company executive. His official title is Chief Yahoo.

Yang, 43, still owns 46.6 million shares, or 3.8 percent of the company's outstanding stock, according to a November 25 filing.

Yang's exit will be cheered by shareholders who want to put the company up for sale, a move Yang was reportedly against.

Allen Weiner, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Austin, Texas, was quoted by Bloomberg as saying: "With Jerry out of the way, it will perhaps make negotiations with the folks at Alibaba easier."

Born in Taiwan and raised in San Jose, Yang co-founded Yahoo as a Stanford University doctoral student. In 1996, Yang and Filo took the company public with CEO Timothy Koogle.