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Jerry Yang turned into worst CEO of the year!

By Amarendra Bhushan for CEOWORLD Magazine Updated:November 10, 2008

As Yahoo famously turned down a bid from Microsoft earlier this year claiming that it was under valued. It also wired a poison pill into everyone’s contracts so that anyone who took the company over would have to pay staff shedloads of cash.

Lately however Yahoo’s shareprice has dropped lower than a flat worm that has been stomped on by a elephant which has been living off hydrogenated vegetable fat for 20 years and the outfit has had to repent of its arrogance. Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang has been asking

Microsoft to come back to the negotiating table but until now Microsoft has been quiet. Now Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has ruled out making another bid for Internet outfit. “We made an offer, we made another offer … We moved on,” Ballmer told journos in Sydney.

“We tried at one point to do a partnership around search … and that didn’t work either, and we moved on and they moved on. We are not interested in going back and re-looking at an acquisition. I don’t know why they would be either, frankly,” Ballmer said.

Ballmer said he made an offer, then made another offer, and it was clear that Yahoo didn’t want to sell the business to us and Microsoft moved on. Ballmer said that he didn’t want to go back and re-looking at an acquisition. He didn’t know why Yahoo would either. Yahoo turned Microsoft down at $33 a share saying that it was worth a lot more, he pointed out. Yahoo was trading at $12.25 a share on Friday.

Ballmer said that he was sure that there were some opportunities for some kind of partnership around search, but acquisition of Yahoo is so last year. Of course Ballmer might be bluffing and wanting to see the price of the company drop. Most analysts think that Microsoft will eventually buy the troubled search engine.

John Battelle
Federated Media Publishing

John Battelle is an entrepreneur, journalist, professor, and author. Currently founder and chairman of Federated Media Publishing, he is also a founder and executive producer of conferences in the media, technology, communications, and entertainment industries and “band manager” with BoingBoing.net. Previously, Battelle was founder, chairman, and CEO of Standard Media International (SMI), publisher of The Industry Standard and TheStandard.com. Prior to founding The Standard, Battelle was a co-founding editor of Wired magazine and Wired Ventures. He is the author of The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture” (Portfolio, 2005).

Jerry Yang
Yahoo! Inc.

Jerry Yang, a Taiwanese native raised in San Jose, Calif., co-created the Yahoo! Internet navigational guide in April 1994 with David Filo and co-founded Yahoo! Inc. in April 1995. He was appointed chief executive officer of the company in June 2007. Mr. Yang, a leading force in the Internet media industry, has been instrumental in building Yahoo! into the world’s most highly trafficked Web site and one of the world’s most recognized brands. Since the company’s founding, Mr. Yang has been a key member of the executive management team. His focus at Yahoo! over the years has included corporate strategy, Yahoo!’s technology vision, strategic business partnerships and international joint ventures, and recruiting key talent. In addition to serving on the Yahoo! Board of Directors, Mr. Yang currently serves on the board of directors of Cisco Systems, Yahoo! Japan, and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., and is also on the Stanford University Board of Trustees. Mr. Yang holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University and is currently on a leave of absence from Stanford’s electrical engineering Ph.D. program.

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