Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

When Yahoo kicked Terry Semel out as CEO, they made a great decision.  It's like kicking George Bush out of office.  When they installed Jerry Yang back as the CEO, a lot of people had high hopes for the founder in being able to recapture the vision and past glory.  I'm sensing a different person.  In this case, it's like getting Al Gore to make a comeback in the '08 election: just too late.

Since returning, I read two major things that Jerry Yang had performed on behalf of Yahoo: 1) deal with the whole China escapade and 2) announcing the layoff of numerous Yahoo-ers.

I'm certain that neither decision is appealing at all for many of the people within Yahoo.  I read that most engineers are going to be retained while a lot of other people (read: middle management) will scramble about to latch onto some project or team before getting The Note.

Of course, Semel did a lot of damage to Yahoo, attempting to convert it into a pure media company whereas the foundation was oriented towards tech.  When Google overtook Yahoo in various areas, Yahoo was left in the dirt of various bad moves, especially in terms of PR.  Now, the focus is on engineering.  Why?  It sounds like they're attempting to follow Google in letting the engineers once again lead the company.  I don't have a problem with this; I have a problem of Yahoo trying to follow Google rather than focus on a separate path or improve upon their core competencies.

While Yang sat on the board, I feel that he probably was away from the day-to-day activities, instead enjoying life as one of the richest and most influential people in the world.  I noticed that he contributes to the Republican party as well, which shows some of his psychological paths.  But I think he's gotten complacent and being away from the day-to-day activities and enjoying a large amount of wealth, removed a lot of his hunger and ambition to drive Yahoo.

Let's face it: Yang's position in Yahoo came from the fact that he helped found it and created some of the technologies along with Dave Filo.  Can he still steer the helm?  Or is he just going to live off of stock?

My feeling is that Yahoo really ought to have promoted someone within the company to CEO.  I don't think Jerry Yang was the best candidate and with the layoff announcement, there'll probably be a lot of backlash against him and what he represents.  Also, probably the only reason why they ended up bringing him back was that internally Yahoo was politically messed up and that no one really trusted anyone else to lead the company.  They really need to groom someone else who had been handling the day-to-day operations of the company and had the vision, passion and hunger to improve Yahoo (raises his hand!).

While I'm certain that there'll be some cool new stuff coming from Yahoo, it won't be earth shattering and I don't think any of the true innovation done will be caused by Yang himself.  Let's see what the upcoming months hold for Yahoo.  But I'm not holding my breath.