It’s important to remember – even as we see another example of why a technologist can’t run a company – that Jerry Yang did bring a tremendous amount of value to the company he co-founded in 1995.  He’s been an asset and will continue to be involved in a technical and board level role.  It’s just unfortunate that his closeness to the company seems to have cost Yahoo the opportunity of the decade because of his resistance to be acquired by Microsoft for as much as $33/share or over $35 billion.  Today, with Yahoo trading up almost 9%, closing at $11.55, $33 seems really, really far away.

On a day where the Dow is up 1.83%, it would appear that Yahoo’s increase of 9% is a sign of approval from the often cutthroat market analysts.

“Yang’s departure will be viewed positively by investors as there was lingering distrust following the aborted Microsoft takeover,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster wrote to clients.

From this perspective it seems obvious that companies are going to have to consider alternative forms of survival much more closely than ever before, because as the markets continue to contract – and even if they don’t – the chances of quickly returning to the high-profile years of past are slim.  Yahoo could have absorbed their technology and users into Microsoft and used Microsoft fortunes to expand their technology and tools to really be competitive with the likes of Google and AOL.  Now it’s difficult to imagine a scenario where a surviving Yahoo is able to grow and compete rather than becoming a simple niche in the free mail/news marketspace.

Ranter