Yang resignation, successor the talk of the Valley Video

Yang resignation, successor the talk of the Valley Video Transcript

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>> Kara: Here in Sunnyvale people in the tech industry say the Jerry Yang Yahoo news is what everyone's talking about, in the same breath they say his resignation comes as no surprise.

>> He's a great entrepreneur but he got dooped by Google in my opinion.

>> Seems like they're having some issues and they need some change and change starts at the top.

>> Well, It certainly didn't surprise us there's been a lot of pressure on Yahoo and a lot of people have been asking for him to step down including major investors like Carl Icahn a few months ago who's now on the board, of course.

>> Kara: Yahoo says they've already begun the executive search to find Yang's replacement. What kind of person are they looking for, a big name perhaps or someone with a lot of technical expertise in one area or another?

>> Certainly they'll be looking for somebody with a lot of technical expertise. Back in the Terry Simmel years, which ended a year and a half ago, Yahoo is becoming a media company, Yahoo, under Jerry Yang has become much more of a technology company. So they'll be looking for a technical person, somebody with turn-around expertise, they might go with somebody, ya know, a bold visionary who can shake things up, they might just look for somebody with a lot of merger and acquisition experience to, ya know, maybe sell off a piece of Yahoo or the entire company.

>> Kara: And what do folks in Silicon Valley think?

>> You can't help but wonder whether they actually want a CEO to keep Yahoo in business or is a CEO a stop gap so they could sell to Microsoft.

>> Someone who can bring some credibility there for discussions with Microsoft and maybe some of the strategic partnerships, I think Yahoo probably like many of their Silicon Valley companies has to deal with partnerships now going forward.

>> Well, I think that you need a CEO or somebody who's going to run your company, who's open to all ideas he seemed very closed on any idea of acquisition, we got to make it on our own.

>> One thing that's certain is they're gonna try to get somebody onboard fast because the company has been, ya know, under pressure for a long time now and they need to move on to the next phase.

>> Kara: Although Yahoo's stock price has fallen to 1/3 of what it was worth in February amidst talk of the Microsoft buyout a major acquisition in this economic climate could be hard to come by.

>> The company still can't argue that it's out of the woods, it can't argue that it's fixed its operations and its business, it can't argue that it's successfully competing with Google, but, on the other hand, it's still a power to be reckoned with, but I still think that there's still very much in a time of flux.

>> Kara: In many ways Yang's resignation is more symbolic than anything.

>> He's gonna go back to his old role of chief Yahoo, which is, ya know, sort of a brains behind the operation, perhaps, visionary and strategy kind of person, so it's not -- he's not gonna disappear completely from the company.

>> Kara: I'm Kara Tsuboi, CNET.com. ^E00:02:36