Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang has resigned from the company’s board, and all other positions with the company, just two weeks after Yahoo appointed ex-PayPal president Scott Thomson as chief executive.
Yang co-founded Yahoo with David Filo in 1995, and served as CEO from June 2007 to January 2009. The company went public in 1996. In February 2008, Yang rejected a $44.6bn (£29bn) takeover offer from Microsoft, to the anger of many Yahoo shareholders. The offer priced Yahoo at a 50 per cent premium on its share price at the time, but Yang believed it undervalued the company, a view that was subsequently shown to be wrong. Yahoo’s current value is around half that figure.
In a letter to Yahoo! board chairman Roy Bostock, Yang wrote: “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.” 
Bostock described Yang as: “a visionary and a pioneer, who has contributed enormously to Yahoo during his many years of service,” adding that the board would miss his “remarkable perspective, vision and wise counsel”.
Perhaps not surprisingly, among the analyst community, Yang’s departure as seen as enhancing the chances of a sale of Yahoo.
