Yang co-founded the company in March 1995, and has been on the Board of Directors since. 17 years later, he has officially stepped down from its Board of Directors and all other positions with the company. And he has done so effective immediately. In addition, he stepped down from the Boards of Yahoo Japan Corporation and Alibaba Group Holding Limited.

This news comes only a couple weeks after Yahoo announced their new CEO Scott Thompson.

“I am grateful for the warm welcome and support Jerry provided me during my early days here,” said Scott Thompson, Yahoo!’s Chief Executive Officer. “Jerry leaves behind a legacy of innovation and customer focus for this iconic brand, having shaped our culture by fostering a spirit of innovation that began 17 years ago and continues to grow even stronger today. Jerry has great confidence in the future of Yahoo!, and I share his confidence in the enormous potential of Yahoo! in the days ahead.”

As for why Yang is leaving? He told the Yahoo board:

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.

Yang replaced Terry Semel as CEO back in 2007. Then a year later, in 2008, Yang stepped down as CEO, leading to Carol Bartz becoming the new CEO in 2009. Now, in 2011, Bartz was ousted and eventually replaced with Scott Thompson a couple weeks ago. Now we learn that Yang resigned completely from Yahoo.

To read the full release, see Yahoo’s investor site. Also see a special recollection of Yang’s early days helping marketers, in this story on our sister-site Marketing Land: As Jerry Yang Steps Down, Remembering The Yahoo Priority Queue.

Related Stories:

• It’s Official: PayPal President Scott Thompson The New Yahoo CEO
• Yahoo’s CEO, Terry Semel, To Be Replaced By Jerry Yang
• Jerry Yang Stepping Down As CEO; Resuming Chief Yahoo Role
• Confirmed: Bartz Out As Yahoo CEO
• Autodesk’s Carol Bartz Named New Yahoo CEO; Sue Decker To Leave As President
• Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang Grilled By Congress On China, Offers Apology
• Jerry Yang & Friends Called To Testify On Chinese Dissidents Case
• Yahoo’s Jerry Yang Donates $75 Million To Stanford University
• Insurgent Yahoo Shareholder Carl Icahn Seeks CEO Jerry Yang’s Ouster

In appointing Thompson, Yahoo is choosing a leader with a deeper technology and product background than prior CEO Carol Bartz who was abruptly terminated last September. In the interim Yahoo CFO Tim Morse has been serving as CEO.

Not going to sell itself now

There had been an expectation that Yahoo was going to sell itself or a significant minority stake to a private equity buyer or another company (perhaps even Microsoft). However the appointment of Thompson would seem to contradict that scenario. (Update: Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock said in the Thompson press release that the company was still considering a sale of assets.)

Thompson was PayPal’s CTO prior to being named president. Before that he worked for a technology subsidiary of Visa. And before Visa he was CIO of Barclays Global Investors. The Yahoo board undoubtedly likes Thompson’s resume, which offers a diverse mix of skills and capabilities.

PayPal has been eBay’s most successful business unit of late, outshining its parent. Thompson’s departure from PayPal will be something of a blow but probably only a temporary one to the payments platform, which is seeking to establish a leadership position in mobile.

The larger and more important question is whether Thompson has the capacity to bring new vigor and focus to Yahoo, the company and the brand — both of which badly need innovation and energy. Another question is whether he’ll seek to bring in his own team or do any sort of reorganization. Numerous personnel changes and reorgs over the past few years have been damaging to Yahoo morale and momentum.

Confronting a range of challenges

Thompson and a renewed focus on product could help stabilize Yahoo. But what we might call “structural” changes in the online ad market (including the rise of Facebook and Google in display) have perhaps irrevocably eroded Yahoo’s once dominant leadership in its bread and butter segment: display advertising. Thompson is also going to be inheriting a search deal that has underperformed and failed to live up to revenue expectations for Yahoo.

What Thompson is not is an advertising or media executive. However current Yahoo EVPs Blake Irving and Ross Levinsohn can more than compensate in those areas, provided that they’re retained or stay, as the case may be.

Mobile is another area that Yahoo badly needs to focus on. While it had an early leadership position in mobile product development and advertising that has been entirely erased by Google in the past two years. Thompson’s knowledge of and experience with the mobile market may also be extremely helpful to Yahoo.

Does he have the right mix of skills?

I had earlier written that Yahoo needed to find its own version of Steve Jobs. That may be too much too ask. But perhaps in Thompson Yahoo will get a fresh start with a new CEO who has the right mix of knowledge, skills and temperament to pull the company out of its protracted slide.

Below is a video from the 2009 Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco at which Thompson spoke about PayPal and mobile payments.

Postscript: Yahoo has officially confirmed Thompson’s appointment as CEO. Yahoo Board Chairman Roy Bostock also indicated in the press release that the company is still considering a sale of some of its assets:

“Scott’s primary focus will be on the core business, and as CEO and director, he will work closely with the Board as we continue the strategic review process to identify the best approaches for the Company and its shareholders. As part of this process, Yahoo! is considering a wide range of opportunities for the Company’s business, as well as specific investments or dispositions of assets,” added Bostock.

Postscript II: Now a couple of reactions from financial analysts who cover Yahoo. They’re consistent, seeing Thompson as a positive hire but expressing some concern about his lack of experience with digital advertising.

Mark Mahaney, Citi:

We Are Marginally Positive On YHOO’s CEO Hire – Mr. Thompson was with PayPal for the past five years – he has been CEO of PayPal since 2008 and before that he was SVP and CTO of PayPal . . . We believe Mr. Thompson has strong technical and organizational skills (like Carol Bartz) and should bring that rigor to Yahoo!. His track record at PayPal was excellent. However, we are somewhat concerned that he does not have strong media/advertising experience, which we believe Yahoo! needs, given the structural issues surrounding the company’s Search and Display initiatives. And by selecting Mr. Thompson, Yahoo! is explicitly pursuing a Growth strategy, whereas we believe a Value strategy might be more appropriate.

Ben Schachter, Macquarie Capital (USA):

We’ve always been impressed with how Scott Thompson led PayPal, and believe that his experience and track record of execution rank him amongst the Internet sector’s more capable executives. YHOO should benefit from Thomspon’s leadership, but we must admit that we find the appointment somewhat surprising given Thompson’s background as a specialist in the online payments/technology space. YHOO has been in the midst of an identity crisis, unsure of its place on the Internet. We look forward to seeing how Scott defines Yahoo, but at this very early stage that vision remains unclear. All else equal, we would have preferred to see the Board hire a candidate with deeper experience in the online advertising/media space, but Thompson could surprise by defining and executing YHOO’s vision in an unexpected way.

The billboard space is managed by Clear Channel and currently is being offered at an extremely low rate of $65,000 per month. Yahoo, who has not been seeing that much growth over the recent years, said they are looking for “new and innovative ways” to advertise and market themselves.

Removing the classic billboard is just one more symbolic nail in the coffin for Yahoo.

For more pictures of the Yahoo billboard being removed, see MercuryNews.com.

Related Entries:

• Yahoo Q1 2011 Mixed: Display Up, Search Down, Revenues $1.06 Billion
• Yahoo Search Ads Now Fully Powered By Microsoft adCenter
• Bartz: “Google Is 90% Search, That’s A Fact” – Except It’s Not
• Yahoo’s Bartz Takes In $47 Million, Yang Gets One Dollar
• Yahoo & Microsoft Receive Go Ahead To Implement Search Deal
• A Year Later, Yahoo’s CEO Gives Herself A B-Minus
• Bartz: Yahoo’s Search Decline Due To Dead Toolbar Deals
• Yahoo, Microsoft Close Search Deal
• What’s Yahoo’s “Plan B” For Search?
• Can Yahoo Really Compete In Search By “Owning The Interface”?
• Yahoo’s Google & Microsoft Deals, Side-By-Side
• Microsoft-Yahoo Deals 2008 & 2009, Side-By-Side
• The Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal, In Simple Terms

There were four announcements, lead by the formal unveiling of Livestand, Yahoo’s long-promised tablet news reader application. It competes with Flipboard, CNN’s Zite, AOL Editions, Taptu, Pulse and others.

Here is a quick summary of the four announcements:

• Livestand: Described as a “personalized living magazine,” it’s a mix of Yahoo’s own content and third party content. There will be ad-supported and subscription based content on Livestand. Irving also demo’d “living ads” for Livestand, which offered rich media interactivity.
• IntoNow is a tablet-based TV companion app. Yahoo said that in the past six months it has seen traffic “double” from tablets. According to the PR materials, “IntoNow identifies what people are watching, whether live or recorded; shows related content and personalized recommendations; and enables discussions with friends.”
• Yahoo Mail was also upgraded for iPad with more visual content and “personalized news, local weather, and Trending Now videos.”
• Yahoo Weather (for Android): Yahoo introduced a richer weather application for Android devices, with images from Flickr (tied to time and location)

Among the four apps, IntoNow is the most interesting from afar.

Before and after the main announcements and demos, there was considerable of discussion of various Yahoo technologies (“CORE”). It was Yahoo again asserting “hey, we’re a technology company.” Yahoo also showcased “fresh faces” from startups the company had acquired. There was also an interesting discussion of a new emphasis on “design” at Yahoo, which seemed to be taking a page from the Steve Jobs playbook.

Yahoo also spent time discussing social integration across its properties and apps. The company spoke in particular about myriad social tools now being rolled out for Yahoo News. My sense of many of these features is that they were a bit “forced” and cumbersome but Yahoo cited traffic stats to suggest they were working or would work to engage audiences.

I was asked by someone after the event was over, “does this move the needle?”

Whether or not Yahoo sees any traffic benefits from these apps, Yahoo is doing the right thing in seeking to re-establish momentum in mobile and build apps that associate its brand with innovation and “cool stuff” rather than simply management turmoil.

Speaking of which, to his credit, Blake Irving acknowledged the uncertainty about Yahoo’s future. But Irving also sought to put to rest a persistent issue that has dogged the company for the past several years. He rhetorically asked and answered the question “what is Yahoo?” He said, “Yahoo is the premier digital media company. Full stop.”

Microsoft Corp. may help to bankroll a potential joint bid for Yahoo by extending loans to its deal partners and buying preferred stock in Yahoo . . . The software giant has been in discussions about a potential joint proposal for Yahoo with private-equity firm Silver Lake Partners and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, people familiar with the matter have said . . .

Microsoft is not seeking full ownership of Yahoo, but rather acting in effect as a financier partly in exchange for being able to retain some influence over Yahoo’s future

On the other hand Google is doing something similar but with a more direct interest in Yahoo and its network according to the WSJ. Potential reasons cited by the publication for Google’s interest include the following:

• Google wants to sell ads across Yahoo’s display inventory
• Google wants to build more direct relationships with Yahoo’s “premium” publisher partners
• Google wants to bring Google+ to Yahoo users
• Google wants to make Microsoft’s life harder and its bid more expensive

Meanwhile Yahoo co-founder and board member Jerry Yang has said that a sale of Yahoo is not a foregone conclusion and that the company has other options to realize value for shareholders. It’s not clear what those might be however. China-based Alibaba Group, which is now partly owned by Yahoo, and Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies are also among the potential bidders.

Any deal involving Google will be subject to close federal review. However that’s less likely with Microsoft in the scenario described above. Regardless of who winds of owning Yahoo, it will take vision and inspired leadership (not merely competent management) to reverse the long, slow decline that has taken hold at the company.

Stock image from Shutterstock, used under license.

Revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs (“revenue ex-TAC”) was $1,072 million for the third quarter of 2011, a 5 percent decrease from the third quarter of 2010. Income from operations decreased 6 percent to $177 million in the third quarter of 2011, compared to $189 million in the third quarter of 2010. The year over year decreases were primarily due to the revenue share related to the Search Agreement with Microsoft.

Display ad revenue, Yahoo’s bread and butter, was also flat vs. a year ago.

On the search side, Yahoo again blamed Microsoft for some of the poor performance. However it also announced that the Microsoft “RPS” search revenue guarantee had been extended in North America through March of 2013. Financial analysts commented that this will make Yahoo more attractive to a prospective buyer. The company is currently shopping itself and there are a number of parties potentially interested.

Source: Mary Meeker/comScore

Yahoo’s lackluster financial performance for the past couple of years is a by-product of a number of factors including the economy and ongoing vision and leadership challenges. Through it all however the Yahoo brand has largely seemed to maintain its appeal among consumers and large advertisers. In the earnings press release Yahoo reminds us that it “is home to 10 number one properties globally and ranks among the top three in 21 categories worldwide.”

Yet the myriad internal reorganizations, the departure of numerous talented personnel and intensifying competition from Google and Facebook have taken a toll. Yahoo was once the leader and innovator in local and mobile — two now critical areas — but it ceded those leadership positions to Google. There are other examples, including of course search where it was once highly innovative and competitive and now largely sits on the sidelines.

The Yahoo brand, which has been one of the company’s chief assets, may be starting to suffer from the company’s drama and internal distractions, which have contributed to its inability to innovate at the level of its principal rivals.

While the brand’s strength is a function of myriad variables if the brand suffers Yahoo will likely see further deterioration in financial performance. As one example, if users abandon Yahoo Mail for GMail because Yahoo is no longer “cool” – just as users shed their AOL addresses in the past — Yahoo will see a decline of a major source of display ad impressions. Brand advertisers, interested in being associated with a “hipper” or more innovative source of impressions will shift some of their budget to Facebook. Google is also eating into Yahoo’s reputation and historical edge with display advertisers.

Once the brand loses its luster it becomes very hard to win users back. AOL is a great example. MySpace is an even more extreme case. While some companies have come back in the real world, IBM and Apple are prominent examples, there are almost no such examples of Internet companies that have fallen from grace and returned to their former glory.

Accordingly if Yahoo “loses it” it’s very unlikely that a private equity company or other strategic buyer will be able to “bring sexy back.”

Reuters is reporting that Yahoo has hired the infamous Goldman Sachs and Allen & Co to help potential buyers through the due diligence process, which could take “months” according to the report.

The New York Times tries to value the various pieces of Yahoo: Alibaba, Yahoo Japan, its patent portfolio and the rest of Yahoo proper and comes to the conclusion that selling off the Asian operations, separate from the main business, could generate more than if Yahoo were sold in one piece.

As of this morning Yahoo’s total market capitalization is about $18.7 billion. But there’s an argument that the core business may not be worth much more than $5 billion according to the New York Times’ analysis.

Let’s assume that Yahoo will be sold some time in the next six months. What will be its fate? That depends of course on the buyer — entirely. A News Corp might run the company very differently than a private equity firm or Jack Ma, if Alibaba were to successfully acquire Yahoo.

Behind the speculation of who might buy the company is the question of whether Yahoo can be reinvigorated and regain momentum. This is a version of the same same question that dogs AOL, which like Yahoo was dominant at one time but has endured a long, slow decline.

Yahoo remains the second largest site online, according to comScore, after Google. Its brand still has great value and is stronger than most other brands online with only a couple of exceptions (Google, Facebook). It may also be a “more trusted” brand than Facebook. Accordingly, “it’s not too late” for Yahoo.

The buyer would need to install strong leadership and be willing to invest in the company rather than simply cut costs and outsource operations to third parties as Bartz had been doing in many cases.

I’m skeptical, however, that any financial buyer would bring the right perspective and commitment to Yahoo. A strategic buyer might do a better job. Then again we saw News Corp. preside over the demise of MySpace.

What should happen to Yahoo and which potential buyer represents the best “fit”?

Postscript by Matt McGee: Following up on what Greg references in the first paragraph above, Reuters is reporting that Microsoft is “considering a bid for Yahoo.” Reuters’ source is a “high-ranking Microsoft executive,” but the article says it’s possible that MSFT won’t follow-through on bidding for Yahoo because “there are internal divisions at the software company on whether it should pursue Yahoo again.”

Microsoft bid $45 billion to buy Yahoo in early 2008, but the deal never came to fruition.

Stock image from Shutterstock, used under license.

“Did we just bump something,” yells Capt. Larry Page to his Googler crew. “No, full steam ahead!” yells back first mate Eric Schmidt. “There were some senators in the water, but I think I’ve handled them.” As for the wreckage of the SS Bing and SS Yahoo that Google also plowed through , that’s hardly troubling him. Google’s watertight.

The Depressing World Of DC

OK, enough with the ship metaphors. Later, fairly soon, I’ll do my own recap of how Google’s big day in Washington DC went, in terms of anti-trust challenges. Google does face some challenges there, primarily because the complexities of search engines are being lost on lawmakers who seem more interested in political talking points and asking for handouts than actually dealing with serious industry-wide issues that should be addressed.

Suffice to say, after witnessing the circus this week in Washington DC, seeing first hand how lawmakers have no idea what they’re supposed to be potentially regulating in an area I know extremely well, I’ve come to realize how deeply they probably screw up all those other areas that I don’t know well but still had some faith that they would have researched carefully. Sigh.

But what about Bing? What about Yahoo? What’s all this about deck chairs?

Bing’s Lost Billions

Earlier this week, CNN Money had an article about how Bing has lost over $5 billion since it was launched in 2009. Our write-up of that piece is here: Bing Still Seeking Magic Formula To Challenge Google & Turn A Profit.

That story follows off an earlier New York Times article about Bing still trying to win from the end of July, as we also covered and analyzed back then: Bing’s Battle With Google: How Long Is “Long Term”?.

CNN Money covers what I’ve kept saying and saying over the past years. Bing is growing, slightly, at the expense of its FTC-approved-so-that-we-have-a-competitive-search-marketplace partner Yahoo. But Bing hasn’t really touched Google’s marketshare. The growth it has had against Yahoo it’s been very expensive. Sponsoring all those shows on Being the “TV To Bing About” sponsor of CW doesn’t come cheap.

That’s OK. Bing’s got a plan. From the CNN Money article, we learn that unlike Google, it can experiment more easily, Bing says. It’ll get away from just showing blue links. It’ll help people do “more” than just search. It’ll apparently become an even better decision engine than it already is.

Are you friggin’ kidding me? Seriously. This is the game plan? That you’re going to keep saying all the same things that you said back when Bing launched? Which, by the way, isn’t even that different than what you were saying when you were Live Search? Or when you were MSN Search?

What’s The Plan, Bing?

All I kept thinking when I read this was Phil from Modern Family trying to figure out how to keep that car rolling away:

Click here to view the embedded video.

What’s the plan, Bing? Because “at least I’m going to do something” isn’t enough.

In reality, the plan seems to be hang in there long enough until Yahoo slips away. It’s probably not a bad plan. Another plan might be to stop spending all that money on advertising. That never worked long term in the past. Marketshare might not drop, but the red ink might.

And, reading from Ad Age today, it sounds like the whole Decision Engine idea might be going away period. Sounds good. How about something fun, play off that old joke everyone thought Bing stood for, “Because it’s not Google.” Give us some ads like “Bing: We’re Not Google.”

Yahoo: Just Sad

If Bing sounds incredibly lame, Yahoo just sounds pathetic. Last week, it rolled out yet another change to its search interface. We even wrote it up: Yahoo Rolls Out New SERP, Will People Notice?

No, no one really seemed to notice. So today, Yahoo’s back at it. It really, really is ready to fight in search. Why, it’s even got a whole fresh new post out saying this:

As the lead of a skunkworks-esque group that focuses on radical new experiences beyond traditional search, I can tell you that Yahoo! is in the most exciting phase of its entire 16-year history. My view is that it’s fight, not flight, for the company and there has never been a time where so many people have wanted to fight like today. Yahoo! Search has some product experiences that are so radically different, you’ll sit back in your seat thinking, “what the &$%# just happened?”

OK, as someone who has covered you for most of your 16 year history, no you’re not. No you’re not! This isn’t the most exciting phase in search for you. This is you being 95 years old and not sure where your glasses are, walking around thinking you’re a spry 21 year old headed out for a night on the town.

For one thing, you’re brain dead. Perhaps you haven’t noticed that you fired your CEO, who put you on this path that you can give up your search technology and still win by having any “search chip” inside a pretty case.

How’s that been working out. Yeah. So while your company is in disarray, and while we’re waiting to see who’s going to run it next, if your board is going to survive, if Microsoft is just going to get to do what we all think might happen and buy you , or whether you’ll merge with AOL so we only have one single depressing story to follow, you want us to believe there’s some search revolution that’s going to appear from your decimated search team that’s going to save Yahoo’s ass?

Hey, if you really do grow your search share steadily over the next 18 months as you seem to think will happen, thanks to yet another batch of buzzword-ridden user interface enhancements, I’ll come yodel down at the Yahooplex for everyone there personally.

Enough Talk

I like Bing. I like Yahoo. It pains me to write this stuff. But it’s true.

I want to see Bing succeed, because they’ve got good technology and good people there who can give us a nice counterbalance to Google. I’d like to see Yahoo succeed, but if you don’t have the search tech, that’s not going to happen.

Please, spare us any more pie-in-the-sky predictions of how you’ll out-innovate, out-experiment, out-user interface your way past Google. There is literally nothing new that you’re saying. Now, it’s just time to start doing and showing.

The offer a somewhat cleaner design, with tabs showing related content and navigational filters that allow sorting by date and related searches.

All the changes discussed in the Yahoo Blog post aren’t live for me but they appear to be generally incremental or modest improvements. Most of the changes appear designed to provide suggestions for related searches and generate additional search volume accordingly.

Last month comScore reported that Yahoo’s US market share had grown by 0.2 percent. It’s basically “stable” or “stuck,” depending on your preference.

Bartz’s legacy is cost containment; and her chief “accomplishment” is the Microsoft search deal, which Wall Street wanted but which sent lots of engineering talent out the door. While the search alliance has generally been good for Microsoft it has not yielded the anticipated dividends (literally and figuratively) for Yahoo.

Low Employee Approval

The task of both chief executives was to turn around a their respective enterprises. Obama has not been able to do it and may face an electoral ouster next year. And after a number of flat or down quarters Bartz was removed over the phone yesterday. That followed several months of rumors that she would be fired.

Bartz’s employee approval rating had sunk to 33 percent, according to Glassdoor, Obama’s numbers are in the low 40s. Among the Yahoo-employee comments on Glassdoor,”execution” failures were cited as a major reason for disapproval of Bartz.

Bartz confirmed the termination herself (from her iPad) before Yahoo itself did in a press release. People are now reading between the lines of that press release for signals as to what Yahoo may do next. The particular line drawing scrutiny is Yahoo’s Chairman Roy Bostock’s statement, “We are committed to exploring and evaluating possibilities and opportunities that will put Yahoo! on a trajectory for growth and innovation and deliver value to shareholders.”

Carve It Up, or Sell the Whole Hog?

That statement, together with the fact that CFO Tim Morse is now the acting CEO, is being seen as a suggestion of a sale of some or all of the company. However a carving up of the company’s assets seems less likely than a sale of the entire company. But that in turn seems less likely than an attempt to find a new CEO and try again. A merger of AOL and Yahoo would probably be a disaster.

Bartz’s ouster has prompted many to say again that Yahoo made its first mistake by not selling whole hog to Microsoft for $45 billon several years ago. Many people also believe that selling search to Microsoft was a mistake. I agree, but Bartz followed a certain kind of cost-cutting logic in doing that deal as well as other “outsourcing” deals at Yahoo.

Others are speculating about who the next CEO might be or should be. GigaOM’s Om Malik likes Jason Killar (of Hulu) as a strong, product-oriented CEO. Yahoo is bidding for Hulu. Mike Shields in Digiday lists numerous current and former interactive and media company CEOs as possibilites (including Michael Eisner), arguing that Yahoo’s next CEO should be from New York and fully position Yahoo as a “media company” rather than a Silicon Valley based tech company.

Yahoo Needs to Find Its Steve Jobs

Yahoo needs a master marketer and visionary to help focus and market the company to employees, investors and consumers. Effectively it needs its own version of Steve Jobs.

Yahoo has already given co-founder Jerry Yang a try, without success. And finding a person with the leadership skills, charisma, vision and overall capabilities of a Steve Jobs is impossible. But if it is going to regain momentum the company still needs someone almost as inspired to help lead the company out of the wilderness.

Yahoo is still a powerful brand with considerable traffic and assets. The company has not fallen as far for “regular people” as it has for technology journalists and insiders. If it is going to avoid being carved up and “sold for parts,” the company will need to find the right CEO who can reinvigorate the company, create a product vision and restore growth. Yahoo isn’t going to get more than about one more chance to “get it right.”

Postscript: Kara Swisher at AllThingsD has compiled a list of potential CEOs for Yahoo, including names such as Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, News Corp’s Jon Miller and Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi. Most of the candidates, however, are unlikely for one reason or another.

Postscript II: From the WSJ: “One of these people said Yahoo is open to selling itself to the right bidder.”