Yang pays price of the Wisdom of the Mob

People are lining up to kick Jerry Yang as he departs Yahoo's top spot, this is typical (from the NYT):

The announcement comes a year and a half after Mr. Yang assumed control of Yahoo from Terry Semel, a Hollywood studio boss that he handpicked for the job. Mr. Yang’s tenure has been marked by a precipitously declining stock price and the high profile collapse of a $44 billion acquisition offer from Microsoft last spring.

“It’s definitely positive from a shareholder perspective,” said Ross Sandler, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets. “Jerry has done less than a stellar job after taking the reins from Terry Semel last year, not just completely botching the Microsoft deal but with poor execution and multiple company restructurings that have done little to restore confidence of any of Yahoo’s shareholders, employees or customers.”

Amazon and Google, of course, who are admired by all as an exemplar of great management and flawless execution, has fared nearly exactly the same:



Yet (as of today anyway) no-one is calling for Messrs Schmidts or Bezos' heads or publicly stoning them in blogland.

They, of course, are merely struggling under adverse market conditions , but clearly - from what the blogosphere and the less financially savvy journalists say anyway - Yahoo's decline is all due to Jerry. Sack him and Yahoo could surely have defied global economics and seen its share prise rise while all about it fell. I await this phenomena now he's gone with eager anticipation!

One of course could argue that they should have sold to Microsoft 6 months ago - a great idea in hindsight, because of course everyone knew the crunch was coming, right? Right! But Yang, imho not unreasonably, felt that the business was worth more than a breakup price. Not only that, but one suspects that Microsoft would no doubt have tried to negotiate as the market dropped - these sort of deals are not sealed on the day.