Yahoo co-founder finally leaves the company

The co-founder of the Internet company Yahoo Jerry Yang is leaving the board of directors and resigning from all positions held in the company, RIA Novosti reports with reference to the Yahoo website.

Yang is also leaving the boards of Yahoo Japan Corporation and Alibaba Group, in which Yahoo has large stakes. The management of Yahoo, which owns the popular search engine and provides a wide range of Internet services, claims that Young made the decision to leave independently.

Young founded Yahoo with David Filo in 1995 (four and a half years before Google) and headed it from June 2007 to January 2009. Both company founders were then graduate students at Stanford University. The site was originally called Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web, and it was a directory of other sites. In April 1994, the site was renamed Yahoo!, and on March 2, 1995, the corporation of the same name was founded, the rapid growth of which occurred in the late 1990s.

Since March 1995, Young served on the company's board of directors, and from June 2007 to January 2009, he served as its CEO.

The figure of Jerry Yang was not liked by many Yahoo shareholders, who believed that Yang's tough position served as an obstacle to the sale of the company to large players in the Internet market, as well as to any change in Yahoo's structure. Shareholders, in particular, were greatly annoyed by his refusal to sell the company to Microsoft in 2008 for $47.5 billion.

Due to the protracted antitrust investigation, an attempt to begin advertising cooperation with Google was also unsuccessful. As a result, Yahoo shares began to rapidly fall in price, and many security holders began to sharply criticize the company's management. Yahoo's capitalization is currently estimated at $20 billion.

The announcement of Yang's departure from the company comes just two weeks after the appointment of Scott Thompson as Yahoo's new CEO. Thompson's predecessor was Carol Bartz, who succeeded Young as head of the company in January 2009. Bartz was fired in September 2011 due to loss of share in the Internet search and advertising markets, as well as a lack of innovative solutions and underestimation of competitors.

Under Thompson's leadership, Yahoo planned to seek replacements for some board members. In addition to Yang, Yahoo's board of directors included eight more people, including Chairman Roy Bostock, representatives of IT companies Hewlett-Packard and Intuit.

The performance of the board of directors has previously drawn sharp criticism from shareholders. In September, New York-based hedge fund Third Point LLC, which owns 5.2% of Yahoo, called for the resignation of several board members, accusing them of “serious management failures” and “devaluation” of the company.