Jerry Yang Resigns From Yahoo

PattonPending writes "It seems that the long tenure of Jerry Yang at Yahoo has ended. Yahoo's board released a letter that Yang wrote announcing his retirement, saying, in part: 'My time at Yahoo!, from its founding to the present, has encompassed some of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life. However, the time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo! As I leave the company I co-founded nearly 17 years ago, I am enthusiastic about the appointment of Scott Thompson as Chief Executive Officer and his ability, along with the entire Yahoo! leadership team, to guide Yahoo! into an exciting and successful future.'"

Comments

Kind of a bummer

[bonch]

I really have to wonder if Yahoo should have accepted Microsoft's $45 billion bid, which Yang was roundly criticized for rejecting. It's not like Yahoo has much else going for it besides a few services like Finance, and I don't even know how well that's doing. In my own experience, the only people I see using Yahoo are computer illiterate users with old email accounts there who refuse to switch to Gmail (the kind of people who type URLs into the Yahoo's search field to visit a website). I never used Yahoo other than a vague memory of trying their "internet directory" a few times way back when, but it's a little sad to see them on an apparent decline since they've been such a staple of the web for so long.

As John Gruber put it: "I remember an Internet without Jerry Yang at Yahoo, but I don’t remember a World Wide Web without Jerry Yang at Yahoo."

Re:Kind of a bummer

[Synerg1y]

Well... when was the last time yahoo launched... anything major?

Re:Kind of a bummer

[ThunderBird89]

I have all my mail on my yahoo account, despite having a Google account as well. It's just that I created the Yahoo! one way back, around 1996-7, and have been using it ever since, and at this point, migrating over to Gmail would be too much of a hassle, and quite frankly, I like Yahoo!'s UI much more than Gmail's (folders, for example, easy-to-use hotkeys, etc).
I've seen the storage expansions, from 20 MB to 100, then 500, then 1GB, and finally infinite, the new UI and the "All-New Yahoo! Mail"-campaign, hell, I even have access to the Premium features like disposable addresses (something else Gmail lacks), without paying anything (though I don't know why, possibly as a reward for long-standing use?).

Regarding searches, I've long since switched over to Google, but for me, mail will always be on Yahoo!, even though I don't use anything else from the company any more.

A sad day, but maybe a catalyst

[goodviking]

Let me preface this statement by saying I love yahoo, or rather I love who theyused to be. I started using yahoo in the akebono days. Back then, Yahoo helped transform the web from a loosely connected set of "hotlists" into a strtuctured entity. They were the cartd catalog for the world wide web, and they owned the space. But they lost their way in the dotcom hype brigade. They tried to be the orginization of the web, the sales front, the noIse maker, ... They built their business on being an organizing force online.

Those days are long gone. They gave it up to be the circus barkers of the internet and are now just like the circus, an outdated spectical with no compelling purpose, kept alive by nostalgia. If Yahoo is to exist in anyrelevant form in 10 years, there needs to be a blood letting. It may be ugly and brutal, but in the end maybe Yahoo will find a reason to exist.

In the end, I am not shedding a tear for Jerry Yang anymore than anyone else who won the lottery.