Ring Around the Yahoo! Who Replaces Yang?

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It almost seemed anti-climactic yesterday when Yahoo finally announced that Jerry Yang would be stepping down as CEO, after a disastrous 17-month tenure, just as soon as a replacement can be found. (The news stabilized the company’s stock a bit, and it closed at $11.55/share, up 8.65 percent on the day. Yahoo has traded as low as $9.86/share recently.)

When Yang took over the top job in June 2007, Yahoo held a 20.2 percent share of the U.S. online-search market, compared with Google’s 52.7 percent share, according to Nielsen Online. But by September of this year, Yahoo’s share had slipped 2.1 percent (to 18.1) while Google’s share increased 7.0 percent (to 59.7). That’s a net loss of 9.1 percent market share for Yahoo.

With a current market cap of $16.01 billion, the company has shed some two-thirds of the value it would have attained had Yang not rejected Microsoft’s takeover offer earlier this year.

Speculation is already focusing on a wide array of candidates for the job of managing this turnaround. Among the names being tossed around, according to PaidContent.com are Jonathan Miller, former CEO of AOL; Peter Chernin, COO and President of News Corp; Tom Freston, retired Yahoo exec; Dan Rosensweig, former Yahoo COO; Meg Whitman, ex-CEO, eBay; Marc Andreesen; Kevin Johnson, CEO of Juniper Networks; Susan Decker, on Yang’s team; plus a number of long-shots.

Meanwhile, I spoke with a former Yahoo exec who maintains good sources inside the company, and he narrowed the list down a bit to the most likely current candidates. You can see that list and vote on who you think it will be in the Predictify widget embedded in today’s post.

Also, please join me in welcoming a new voice to our media industry blog page — Catharine P. Taylor, who analyzes the situation at Yahoo for us today.

(Note: Besides blogging for Bnet, I serve as Editor in Chief at Predictify.)

Tags: Jerry Yang, Yahoo! Inc., Recruitment & Selection, Blogging, Strategy, Human Resources, Workforce Management, Internet, Management, David Weir

In addition to serving as a BNET Media analyst/blogger, David Weir is a veteran journalist and the author of several books. Weir is a co-founder and vice-president of the Center for Investigative Reporting, as well as an editorial board member of The Nation.